Contrapasso
by Nookienostradamus
Summary: Hannibal Lecter meets Francis Dolarhyde long before he is the Red Dragon, guiding him through a transformation that will see him rise to the full glory of his Becoming. A retelling of Dante Alighieri's "Inferno," with Hannibal as dark Virgil and Francis as his charge and acolyte.
1. Canto I: Vestibule (Francis)

Francis Dolarhyde looks up from the small bank of screens, where indistinct forms dance and waver. The school, determined to effect its renaissance (as the city-wide ad campaigns proclaimed), had invested heavily in infrastructure. This appears to exclude the network of closed-circuit cameras over which Francis presides. Like an impassive god, he sometimes thinks. Half of the cameras or the other are always on the fritz.

A female freshman last year claimed to have been assaulted in one of the parking garages after a late-night study session. That had actually occurred on Francis's single evening off during the week. The guard on duty was given a week's suspension without pay in pure spite of the old equipment.

Sometimes he pictures the woman (young, young...), her beautiful dark skin and her halo of hair, alone and frightened and in pain...and his heart aches for her. Other times he pictures the same scene and it makes him hard. He hates himself for it. Sometimes.

The people-they're kids, really-walking through the breezeway between the University of Baltimore's Buildings Five and Seven have no faces. It could be the fault of the camera, or it could be the fault of Francis's mind. They don't need faces; they're all the same. If they don't see him, why should he be forced to look at them? And yet he has trouble looking away. So many hopeful little dreams soon to be moot, insignificant, once the full force of cold reality slams down. So many clicking, clacking minds. So much teeming meat.

Occasionally, one of them waves and greets him. They do not stop to chat, because they assume he doesn't like to talk. In that they are correct. Just _Hey, Mr. D_. Then they are gone.

He has had girls stare. They are trying to reconcile. Francis is an exceedingly good-looking man. He is tall with dark ash blond hair, muscular, broad-shouldered. He has excellent teeth (though half of the front from the left incisor to just behind the canine is a prosthetic, a bridge). The girls won't see these because he doesn't smile. He offers just a white edge of the upper teeth. These positive, attractive attributes he tries to project, but he knows it's in vain. The girls, the women—their gaze slips down from his long-lashed blue eyes to the dark purple of the scar that curves from his upper lip to just beneath his left nostril. It hitches his lip up like an old-fashioned stage curtain, and it is just as gaudy.

The women blink. They give a smile just seconds too late.

On one of the screens in the upper right, a faceless man has stopped and is, Francis assumes, looking up at the lens of the camera. The man who is only his face stares back at him, and thinks it's ironic.

"Hey, D."

The voice startles Francis from his daze. It's Andy, the guard who mans the little booth beside the west parking garage.

Andy claps his hands and rubs them together. The heating is out in his tiny cabin, and the old ceramic fire hazard of a space heater he's brought is woefully inadequate.

Francis does not envy him.

Andy goes to the small table that stands by the door and pours some of the ashy-tasting coffee into a styrofoam cup, then empties almost the entire canister of powdered creamer into the cup after it. "Last week it was warm, too," he says. "What the heck?"

Francis hates when people talk about the weather. It's inane, grating. He shrugs.

"Any plans for Thanksgiving?"

Francis shakes his head. He tries to go back to watching his screens. The young man looking into the camera has gone.

"Got the wife's family coming over." Andy makes a show of rolling his eyes. The liquid in his cup is right at the rim, trembling there as he moves.

"Not yours?" Francis asks, negotiating around the "s" as his old speech therapist had taught him.

"Hell," Andy says, "don't mind telling you mine's all dead."

This makes Francis's head snap up.

"Drank themselves into the grave," Andy continues, oblivious. Cheerful.

"Mine, too," Francis says. "Dead, I mean."

"Damn. I'm sorry, man." Andy turns to go and a good deal of the coffee sloshes out of his cup and onto the floor below. "Oh, heck."

"I'll clean it up," Francis says. He is anxious to be on his own again, watching his faceless charges.

"Let me just get some napkins," Andy tells him, setting the dripping coffee cup on the desk above the bank of screens.

"You go ahead." Francis tries for insistence; it sound wheedling to his ears. He sneers, making sure Andy has his back turned. "I'll take care of it."

"Thanks, pal."

Francis is not Andy's pal.

Andy takes his cup and turns once again toward the door, then hesitates for a moment and turns back around. He props his elbows on the desk in front of Francis, who is trying very hard not to cover his mouth with his broad hand.

"Listen," says Andy. "If you want to have Thanksgiving dinner at my house, I'm sure my wife would be more than happy to have you. Think about it?"

Francis hears the pity in his tone and battles back a red wave of rage. "No, thank you."

"You sure, man? It's not a problem. Linda makes enough food to feed an army. You look like you could pack it away." Andy laughs, and in it is an edge of nervousness.

"No."

"Come on. Nobody should be alone on Thanksgiving."

The red tide overwhelms Francis, clouds his vision. He shoots up out of his chair, which goes skittering behind him. Andy flinches away but not far enough. "I said no!" He slams the heels of his hands into Andy's shoulders and the man goes careening away from the desk.

Francis's head is now clear enough that he sees the heel of Andy's shoe go into the small puddle of coffee. Andy falls, mouth open in a silent "o," his arms pinwheeling. The crack of his head against the corner of the table is loud in the silence of the room. The coffeemaker rattles with aftershocks. Francis has never before seen a person's eyes roll completely back in his head, showing only the whites like a panicked horse. No, that isn't entirely true. When Grandmother passed in the narrow, creaking bed she had slept in for longer than Francis had been alive, her eyes rolled upward, but there had been a thin moon-sliver of milky blue below the lid. Francis had not been able to close those eyes. He'd covered her with her musty quilt instead.

Andy is on the ground. When Francis walks from behind the desk, the pool of dark blood on the linoleum is already shockingly large.

He knows he shouldn't, but he tries to cradle Andy's head, to get him to wake up. He feels the triangular indentation just underneath the base of the skull. Warm blood shoots out over his fingers. Like he has seen in movies, he slaps Andy's cheeks lightly. None of it makes any difference.

He lets Andy's head down again and it lolls obscenely, as if something has been loosened inside his neck. Francis stands. There is a sea of red lapping against the soles of his work boots. He steps back from it, away, outside the door. Then he pulls out his cell phone, dialing 9-1-1 with one hand so as not to sully the screen.

 _We don't make our possessions dirty, Francis. When will you_ learn _?_

An operator picks up, asks him whether he would like to be connected to police, fire, or ambulance.

"Ambulance," says Francis, wincing at his pronunciation.

In the weak sodium light mounted on the roof of the guard station, Andy's blood on his hand looks greenish-black.

It is nearly dawn and far past the end of Francis's shift when he returns home. His commute is a long and rambling thing, through the city and underneath the Beltway, up County Route 147 Northeast almost halfway to Fallston. Typically, he doesn't mind it but this morning he is tired.

Tired but too on-edge to sleep. Wasn't it entirely believable that Andy slipped of his own accord in the puddle of coffee, causing him to strike his head? He didn't regain consciousness throughout the time that the EMTs were trying to stanch the bleeding from the back of his skull and strapping him into a bright orange foam head brace. He was not conscious when they finally loaded him into the ambulance, taking what seemed to be their sweet time with it.

Francis had more than half-hoped he would bleed out on the way to the hospital. There was so very much blood on the floor, after all.

When Andy wakes— _if_ , Francis reminds himself—he will be quick to point the finger, though. They will arrest Francis.

People at the school, his co-workers, will describe him to the police as mild-mannered and quiet. Perhaps that could work in his favor. Plus, people with head injuries misremember things.

But Francis is so tall and so strong. Imposing. Because of his flaw ( _and his mind_ , he thinks, _his sometimes sick and bad mind_ ) would they take Andy's word over his? Francis has a headache. He thinks he has a brain injury, too, though it isn't the kind that is spilling out red all over the linoleum.

They hadn't reached out and touched anyone before tonight, those writhings and chatterings in his mind. Hadn't _infected_ anyone. They're very worked up this morning. Showing him things: exciting things, sickening things. He wants to pry the top of his skull off and let the horrors free. Yet he isn't so much afraid of what they will do when they're loose in the world as the void that might be left inside his head when they are gone.

He needs to wipe the night clean, which is why he eschews the usual ritual of taking his bridge out and soaking it in the effervescent cleaning solution after he mounts the old, creaking stairs to his apartments on the huge house's second floor. The dental appliance feels filmed over, but Francis doesn't care. He needs to purify. One hundred push-ups in his attic studio, fifty pull-ups, working until his arms are screaming with pain. Two hundred weighted crunches, curling and twisting on every other repetition. His abdomen is a sheet of white agony when he begins the weighted squats and calf raises, one hundred of each.

He is clenching his teeth tight together when he has finished, runnels of sweat tracing paths over the swollen muscles. But it has helped. The pantomime in his brain has ceased for the moment. There is only that gilded afterglow of pleasure-pain, a pleasant blankness neither wicked nor good.

Leaving his clothes in a heap on the floor of the studio, Francis showers, then wraps himself in his tattered bathrobe. He needs to get another; he can order the same brand and size off the internet and no one has to see him in a store. Yet this is the one he has had since before Grandmother died. At last, he removes the bridge from his mouth and drops it with two tablets into a cup of cool water. On the other side of the vanity, a similar cup holds Grandmother's dentures, crusted with white residue and the tarry evidence of her lifelong smoking, the water long since dried. He can still catch a hint of that ashtray scent if he holds the lip of the cup just underneath his nose.

The thought of doing so crosses his mind, but Francis ignores it. Instead, he absently traces the line of small, circular scars on his left flank, the healed burns knotted under his fingers.

Without the fogged lens of the night over the events, he can now more effectively evaluate the situation. Is it dire? It may be. He could lose his job. He could be arrested, hurting his chances of finding another one. The possibility, Francis finds, frightens him less than he had thought it might.

No, it was the abrupt translation of thought into motion that scared him. Or, rather, the transliteration of impulse. He had felt no more control over his hands as they shot out and pushed Andy to the floor than he does the urges of his bladder or bowels (not for any lack of trying on Grandmother's part).

Incontinence of action.

Had he "snapped?" Is that what they called it? The cumulative effect of proverbial straws on the backs of camels? Francis doesn't see it as a snap, a breaking point. Perhaps that is part of his sickness. Maybe he should treat it as such.

But, even still...the power of not his mind but his body over poisonous pity. It had felt like a step forward. Dear God, it felt like vindication.

 _Don't you dare take Our Lord's name in vain, Francis. Blasphemy is a mortal sin. You'll burn forever in a lake of fire. Naughty boys go to Hell. You remember that._

He knocks the heel of his hand against his temple, hard, to stop Grandmother's voice. Francis doesn't believe in Hell. But he believes Grandmother.

By that evening, when he arrives at work, the lake of blood has been scrubbed away. The security station has always been dingy, but the linoleum shines and the place smells of bleach. Francis fields a curious, empty sort of disappointment. It is as if he expected Andy's blood had become the floor and had dried to a lacquered shine upon which Francis would step from then on.

Levon, the afternoon-shift guard, is still sitting behind the desk when Francis approaches. He gives what appears to be a wary look, but shifts to concern. Genuine concern, not undue pity.

Francis is taken aback.

"You don't have to be here, man," says Levon.

He stops, stands still, fingers fidgeting at his pockets. "I do."

"Hammond said you could take the night off after, you know…" he trails off.

"What?" Francis's heart was pounding.

Levon lowers his voice. "Andy."

"Did he wake up?"

"No, man. They say he's in a coma. It's fifty-fifty that he wakes up at all, they said."

"Oh, no," says Francis, relief gushing into his chest like a warm whirlpool.

"Nothing you could have done. Just one of those freak accidents, you know?"

"I tried to help him," Francis says, clasping his hands in front of him to keep them from shaking.

"I know you did," says Levon, coming around the desk to clap Francis on the shoulder. "I know you did."

"You can go now," Francis tells him. "If you want."

"Hammond wants to see you real quick, then I'll clock out."

All the relief he had felt drains from his body. "Okay," is all he can say. He doesn't budge.

"He's right in the office," Levon prompts.

Francis nods and turns, shoulders stiff. He hesitates a moment before opening the door. Though he is a full head-and-a-half taller than his supervisor, he still feels cowed. "You wanted to s... talk to me?"

Hammond, who is balding in a little round tonsure, turns to him and says, "I wanted to thank you. If it wasn't for you calling the ambulance, Andy might have been a lot worse off."

"I did what anyone would do."

"I think some people would have frozen up. But you didn't," says Hammond.

"It wasn't enough," Francis says carefully.

"Coffee?"

"No, thank you." He tries to block out the memory of Andy's warm blood pulsing out over his fingers.

"You seem like a real sensitive guy, D," Hammond tells him.

Francis is immediately on edge. "What does that mean?"

Hammond looks at him, the same damnable pity on his face. "It's a compliment. I just...some guys can get really messed up after seeing something like that."

"I'm fine," Francis says.

"Listen," says Hammond, digging in the breast pocket of his dark blue uniform shirt, "give this guy a call if you feel like it." He hands over a business card, printed on heavy, cream-colored stock. "He helped my brother with some of his shit—pardon my French—his issues after he came back from Desert Storm. 'Exposure therapy.' Bill was telling me about it. Seems kind of creepy to me, but it worked."

"Thank you," Francis says, trying not to let the blush threatening to suffuse his pale cheeks rise.

Hammond claps him on the shoulder, as everyone apparently does. "You did good, buddy."

He nods and then turns, shoulders rigid. Levon is gone, so he takes his place behind the guard's desk. Two of the screens in the bank are fizzing with static interference. He sighs.

An hour later, he realizes he is still holding the card, the paper going soft in his sweaty hand. He looks at it. In simple copperplate print it reads:

Hannibal Lecter  
Psychiatrist

There is a phone number at the bottom. Francis turns the card over, but the reverse side is blank, warped where he had clutched it between his fingers. He goes to throw the card into the wastebasket underneath the desk but stops. Instead he puts it in his breast pocket, below which his pulse is now slow and steady.

Francis has trouble sleeping when he finally arrives at his house, the hulking old Victorian that used to belong to Grandmother. It still does, in its way. At six o'clock, still restless, he gets out of bed and goes downstairs to make strong coffee in an old-fashioned percolator. His hand is large around the small cup that used to be part of a complete tea service set. It is the only one left. Francis had accidentally broken the others when he was cleaning out the cupboards after Grandmother's death. It was soon enough afterward that he lay awake all the following night expecting to hear her shuffling footsteps, her sharp voice.

An hour later, for no reason he can name, he digs his uniform shirt out of the laundry basket. There is a great sense of relief that washes over him when he finds the card still in place inside the pocket.

His heart begins to thump as the phone rings in his ear. Once. Twice. Three times. Francis is about to hang up when a soft, cultured voice answers.

"Hannibal Lecter's office," the man says.

Francis cannot place the accent, but he knows it must be European. The fact that others may find this man's speech difficult to comprehend puts Francis at ease somewhat. "I—" he begins, "I'd like to talk to the doctor."

"You are speaking with him."

"Oh, I was...expec—" the word 'expecting' is still hard for Francis to pronounce without an acute sense of self-consciousness, so he changes tack. "I thought you would have an..." _Answering service. Dammit. Too many 's' sounds._

It seems Lecter takes his meaning. "I prefer to take calls myself. A sort of preliminary screening, you might say."

 _Do I pass?_ Francis wanted to know, heart in his throat. Instead of that, he said. "I'd like to make an appointment."

"Very well," says Lecter. "When are you next free?"

"I work evening shift."

"Earlier, then. My calendar is open from one to four o'clock today."

"Today?" Francis echoes.

"We can move it later in the week, if you prefer."

 _We._ The word hints at a sort of initial kinship, even though Francis knows it is probably an illusion. "No, today is fine. One o'clock."

"May I have a name?"

Francis takes a deep breath, willing himself to get the pronunciation right. "Francis," then adds, "Dolarhyde."

"Please write this down, if you will, Mr. Dolarhyde. My office is at seven twenty-one Acheron Street. Baltimore, of course. I trust it's not too far a drive."

"No," says Francis. "Thank you." He commits the address Lecter has given him to memory. Francis was always good at remembering things, whether he wanted the thing in his head or not.

"I'll see you shortly," Lecter says.

Absent anything else to say, Francis hangs up. He puts the phone down and drains the last of the coffee. It doesn't occur to him that the doctor did not ask him for a reason for the visit. Perhaps Lecter was able to discern a certain need simply by the tone of Francis's voice, which worries him.

He takes up the phone again, his thumb hovering above the keypad, fully intending to call and cancel the appointment. It may seem cowardly. It probably happens all the time. If he were to do it, would Lecter refer him on to someone else? The odd, curt phone call had the air of a single chance, after which there would be no others.

 _A preliminary screening process_. Certainly, Francis can have one of his own. Like this doctor, he makes his living observing people, guessing at their motives. He wonders whether this seer has ever himself been seen. It is a satisfying thought, one that allays fear and doubt.

Francis looks over at the clock on the oven. Its green digital display clicks over to the next hour as he watches. It is a rare occurrence. Portentous, perhaps.

If he hurries, he can complete his calisthenics and have enough time to shower before he sets out on the long drive back into the city. Still, he cleans the coffee pot and the cup with care, setting each back in their respective cabinets with the quiet tentativeness of a child trying not to wake his parents in the pre-dawn hours.

Admonished by Grandmother against lateness as an adjunct to his many other sins, voluntary or involuntary, Francis pulls his van up to the curb at 721 Acheron Street at ten minutes until one. The day is cloudy and cool, so he stays inside with the windows rolled up. The heating is off, though. He is already nervous and sweating.

 _It's not too late. You can turn around and go._

 _It_ is _too late._

If Andy wakes up, this will look good. Francis is getting "help." What would a normal person do? A normal person wouldn't have pushed Andy in the first place. Would not have held a palmful of hot blood and let it run through his fingers, turning the dirtied hand over and back, over and back in the low light. Would not still have the soiled shirt still in the attic studio to mop his sweat-soaked brow, leaving behind what perhaps could be only an imagined trace of pink on slick skin.

 _You're the filthiest child who ever lived._

Francis grits his teeth so hard it seems for a moment his bridge might pop free, and pounds the heel of his hand at the top of the steering wheel so hard the whole van shudders.

He looks at his watch. He has one minute to reach the door in order to avoid disappointing Dr. Lecter. After a deep breath, Francis leaps out of the van, only just remembering to lock it behind him. The main door of the understated two-story brownstone is painted a dark burgundy. There is no small, round privacy window set into the wood, which strikes Francis as unwise, even in the money-padded seclusion of the Bolton Hill neighborhood.

Anyone peering through the door would see his throat working, struggling to swallow down the lump that is knotting there as he raps on the hardwood.

A sleek intercom crackles to life beside Francis's elbow, making him jump.

"Just a moment, please," says the same accented voice that had answered the phone.

Francis nods, though no one inside will see him.

The intercom makes a rhythmic ticking sound, then Lecter's voice comes again. "Mr. Dolarhyde. Please come in. The door is unlocked."

When he presses his thumb down on the latch it clicks. He feels it rather than hears it. Francis steps into warm darkness that smells of leather...and something else he can't identify. There is no one in the small room in which he stands, but he sees the winking lens of a camera mounted in the corner before the door shuts entirely.

It's a very advanced, very expensive model. He stares into the camera's eye until he hears another door unlatch. Part of the wainscoted wall before him has pulled away and the crack lets in gray, filtered daylight. In the slice of light stands a man—tall, but not as tall as Francis. He is clean shaven, with medium brown hair gone somewhat long but nonetheless carefully groomed and combed away from his patrician forehead. His face seems to be all angles and shifting planes. His eyes are many colors, but near-inscrutable in the half-dark.

Hannibal Lecter smiles without showing his teeth.

Francis unwittingly does the same.

"Please," Lecter says, opening the door wider.

The room that Francis enters is a cathedral of folded shadows, made just that much starker by the weak glow that filters in through heavy, vertically-striped damask curtains. They fall in burgundy and taupe down the double-story windowpanes and pool in artful pleats on the carpeted floor. At the center of the room is a large, heavy wooden desk, behind which is a leather chair. Francis expects that this is the chair behind which Lecter will seat himself, but he is wrong.

With fingertip pressure at his elbow—an oddly intimate first impression—he guides Francis to a set of chairs by one of the windows, each chair facing the other. Without waiting, Lecter seats himself.

Uncertain, Francis sits across from him, his chin tucked down toward his chest.

"I suspected it was palatal, not just labial. Can you confirm, please?" Lecter says.

Francis's head snaps up, his eyes wide. The wordless sound that comes out of his mouth is vaguely interrogative.

"Was the full palate cleft at birth?"

Brows knitting, Francis blinks once. Twice. He is not reluctant to answer, but is put off guard by the fact that the first thing Lecter chooses to address is his disfigurement. "Partial," he finally says.

"Then you'll have a dental appliance of some sort."

Francis nods.

"You'll forgive me what might seem like impudence, Mr. Dolarhyde. I assure you it is only curiosity, much the same as what you might have regarding me."

Determined not to seem cowed, Francis says, "Where are you from?"

"Lithuania," Lecter answers. "Would you like a cup of tea?"

"No. Thank you."

"Very polite. Someone's taught you manners as compensation. How much of your day consists of compensation, Mr. Dolarhyde?"

Francis understands. He is not resentful, only parrying familiar shame.

"No need to answer," Lecter says. "That's not why you came to see me, anyway. Is it?"

"There was an accident. At work."

"Not you. Someone else?"

Francis nods. "A man. Andy. My co-worker. He's in a coma." The s comes out more easily than he had thought his stiff tongue might allow.

"What happened to him?"

Here Francis freezes, though there seems not to be any menace behind the question. Only the same bald, almost cheerful, curiosity. "He fell. Hit his head. There was...a lot of blood."

"Ah," says Lecter. "You were referred to me by your employer."

A nod.

"He is afraid you may be...traumatized."

Another nod.

"But you aren't traumatized, are you?"

"No."

"And yet you still made the appointment. You were the one who called and spoke to me. We will have to look at what that suggests."

" _We_ " again. The subtle intimation of a bond, either formed or to be formed. Francis relaxes a little into his seat.

"This Andy, this co-worker of yours. Did you like him?"

"I liked him enough."

"Did he like you?" Lecter asks.

"I don't know."

"Did he know your name?"

"Everyone calls me 'D.' Or 'Mr. D.'" Francis says.

"What do you call yourself?"

The question makes Francis flinch. "My name," he says.

"'Francis?'" Lecter prompts.

Francis nods, hesitant.

"But you don't like to say it. Even in your head. It took great willpower to tell me your full name on the phone, as you did."

It had. "Mm-hm," says Francis.

"Good," Lecter tells him. "I suppose you know the utility in naming something? We name things so that we can refer to them. Yes?"

Francis takes the question as rhetorical.

"But when we name things, they also become more real. More concrete. They have more _consequence_ to us. Is there anyone who knows you by your first name?"

"Grandmother." It is out of Francis's mouth before he can stop it. "But," he says, "she's dead."

"We cannot remain unnamed, Mr. Dolarhyde. Not to ourselves. I don't mean that it's inadvisable. I mean that it is impossible. Your co-workers, they think of you as 'D.' Your grandmother knew you as 'Francis.' You don't call yourself anything, do you?"

Feeling as though a great hand is squeezing his lungs together, Francis shakes his head.

"I see."

Francis wants to shout at him, _What do you see? What do you see that I don't?_ But he is pinned, motionless, riveted to his chair.

"I do hope that is something we'll be able to discover during our journey together," Lecter says. "Now, if you would, tell me about your grandmother."

Francis is in a daze when he leaves Lecter's office. However humiliating, it had been somewhat of a comfort, really, to talk about Grandmother rather than having to say anything more about Andy's "accident" or his role in it. Grandmother is ornamental, bombastic. A distraction from the blackness Francis fears lays behind her. It is the same green-black as blood in yellow sodium light and it roils, restless.

He is pleased with himself, in that he does not believe any of that dark seeped through as he spoke to the doctor, despite his unnerving, probing questions. Francis thinks he may have a few questions of his own for Lecter. He can't be certain, but there is something of the trauma victim behind the doctor's precise, economical action and diction. Has he been hurt? Harmed someone? Both? Perhaps hurt is a force that does not evaporate but merely passes through people one to the next, an inevitability. Those who have been hurt must themselves hurt in order to prevent an imbalance in nature. Perhaps Francis is merely a victim of that imbalance. Will Andy return from the other side of sleep and pass it back? Or maybe it is being dissipated in the sufferings of Andy's family members as they take turns by his sterile bedside. The idea makes Francis feel both guilty and relieved.

He does not have time to return home for lunch before his shift, meaning he must stop and eat somewhere, which he detests doing. All too often the food is greasy and of poor quality. He must also endure the stares and whispers of the staff, some of whom do not even try to conceal their wonder and disgust. Or, less often—thank God—their pity.

Driving out of Bolton Hill, he figures he can go to Lexington Market, get caught in the tail end of the lunch crowd as it seethes through the corridors that smell of baked goods and frying meats. He can take something to go and eat in the van, avoiding parking police who range from hypervigilant to actively sadistic in their ticketing. He has a tattered paperback copy of Joseph Campbell's _The Power of Myth_ that he has kept in the center console for just such an occasion.

Inside the Market, Francis can easily see over the heads of the milling crowd where he wants to go. It is a small sandwich shop at the far end of one of the rows. There are so few people in the area that he almost considers sitting at one of the tables, his back to the rest of the shoppers and diners.

There is what seems to be a young girl behind the counter, facing away from Francis. She has long blonde hair and wears jeans with too many holes in them and a shirt covered in swirls of silkscreened paint and rhinestones.

Francis clears his throat.

When the woman turns, he sees she is much older than he first thought. Her eyes widen. She doesn't say anything for a few long seconds. Then, at last, she says, "What can I get for you, big guy?"

His stomach may complain later, but Francis orders a full-size Italian cold cut sandwich and two bottles of water, one of which he'll have behind the security desk with him tonight. He turns away as the woman begins making his sandwich, but she is not so far from his sight line that he misses the fact that she reaches for but then decides against wearing a pair of latex gloves, holding the baguette instead with her dirty-nailed hands.

When she begins plucking slices of cold meat out of their trays with her bare white fingers, he looks away.

She wraps the food up and hands it over the counter along with the water. A young couple has sat at one of the tables near the sandwich shop and the taller boy is getting up, presumably to order.

Francis turns quickly, digging out his wallet.

"You get in a knife fight?" the woman behind the counter asks.

He shakes his head.

"My cousin Rodney got in a knife fight. Screwed up his face bad like that." It is a matter-of-fact sentiment. She takes the money in her grubby hands, counts out Francis's change and pours it into his palm. "Have a good day, hon."

Francis shoulders past the boy who is approaching the counter and heads back out to his van.

Our journey together.

Sitting at the guard desk, Francis remembers what Lecter had said at the start of their appointment. It comes to him after reading the small portion of _The Power of Myth_ that he had been able to manage while taking his lunch in the van. Francis is a slow but thorough reader.

As the volume of students and staff shuffling by his camera-eyes diminishes, he ponders the hero's journey. In its earliest iterations, the hero who slays the thing in the shadows. Later, he who _becomes_ the thing in the shadows, unrecognized by those he has sacrificed to save. Whatever journey is his, Francis knows it will be one of intent, of conscious motion. He is of exceedingly humble birth and does not consider his flaw as one that requires heroic overcoming. The woman at the sandwich shop; she sees, but she doesn't see. None of them do. Only Francis—or whomever he is inside his head—sees. Perhaps Lecter will have some vantage along the journey. Perhaps he'll only be a guide, blind by choice or by nature. Then, when permitted to see at the end of it, blinded by radiance.

Francis has a dim sense that Andy was the beginning, the rupture. All is dim now, dim as the shapes that slip by onscreen. Unquantifiable as the fuzzed feedback from the malfunctioning cameras. Dim as in Lecter's office. But they will brighten like sun on snow.

Francis _hopes._

Later, in his bed, Francis falls asleep almost at once. This is something that has not happened to him for a very long time.

In his head, he is walking along a wooded path at twilight. The air should be filled with sounds—the insects and night peepers whistling and creaking—but all is silent. He feels a presence ahead, something toward which he is walking, but he can't see it. All that is before his eyes is the darkening path.

 _The cameras are bad_ , he thinks.

At the lip of a dry creekbed in front of him, Andy rises from the crumbling clay. He sports a lion's mane and paws—swishing scythes in the air before Francis's nose. Francis stumbles back. Andy spreads his hands out, palms up like a martyr. His eyes roll back into his skull, showing brown petechiae.

"You look like you could pack it away," he says in a voice that sounds dry and disused.

Francis steps forward and pushes him again—hard. This time, Andy slumps into the fall, a tiny smile on his lips. When his head strikes the opposite bank, green-black blood fountains over his shoulders. It flows into the creekbed, filling it. As Andy's head disappears below the flood, other round shapes rise. They are human heads whose mouths fill with thick blood when they open them to lament. After only a moment's deliberation, Francis steps across the swollen creek, each solid, high-arched foot set down on a different head.

He hears the creek's continued slick flow in the distance as he walks on. The path grows darker until a stalactite of white moonlight splits the treetops. From its spotlight glow on the ground emerges a beautiful woman dressed in vivid sunset orange, her gown slashed through with stripes of black. He cannot tell whether they are adornments on the dress or holes in her very person through which he can see the darkness beyond. Francis covers his mouth with one hand.

Her skin is luminous brown, and for a moment she looks like the campus rape victim who sometimes invades his daydreaming hours. But then he blinks and she is someone else entirely, holding her arms out to him. He knows he must put his hand down if he is to hold her. Here, Francis hesitates for even a longer time than he did when facing Andy. When he lets his hand fall to his side, the woman does not flinch away. Instead, she smiles, and he goes to her embrace. But as soon as he feels her warmth she dissipates in a bloom of steam and Francis is left with arms wrapped around his own torso, bereft.

Now he can barely see the path. He's begun to trip over roots on the ground, the fingers of trees reaching to bridge the divide of the beaten-down track, to overtake it. He doesn't see her at first, waiting. Then, as his eyes adjust, Grandmother's face resolves out of the darkness. Her grin is too wide, full of too many teeth. She sits almost as a Buddha, on gray haunches, great teats hanging from her belly.

 _Come here, you disgusting child. Come here and take your punishment._

Francis shakes his head, slow as if weighted down.

Grandmother raises her sharp-nailed hand and Francis gulps in agony as the seam along his lip splits. Blood pours over his chin. Still he shakes his head.

His nose ruptures, the rent making its way up toward the corner of his eye.

"Please," he tries, but he can't say it.

Grandmother laughs.

At last, he gets down on his knees, goes to her breast, knowing it is filled with poison. But he is unable to suckle with his ruined face, only to slobber blood all over her skin.

She opens her mouth to berate him when a rumble shakes the ground.

Grandmother sways on her wolf's paws and gnaws at thin air. Francis takes the opportunity to run past her into a clearing that seems darker than the woods. Yet still he can see the peak of a shadowed mountain. He is thrown to the earth when the second earthquake comes.

A huge, leathery wing unfolds from the mountainside, revealing a great blunt head with yellow eyes, slitted like a snake's. It is not a mountain but a dragon, and its waking shakes the ground.

Francis turns to run and can see behind him that Andy, the woman, and Grandmother have come into the clearing. They cringe and cower, and it gives Francis a dark glee to see it.

 _Before me you rightly tremble_ , the dragon says, its serpent's mouth forming the words perfectly and without fumble.

Francis wakes up sticky and cool. He shivers and feels the sheet around him. Wet.

 _Oh, God._

He vaults from the bed, fearing he has lost control of his bladder as he used to when he was a child.

 _Grandmother_ , he thinks, whirling to face the door to his room, expectant, terrified.

Only then does he realize that part of the sheet has adhered to his chest. He peels it away, wincing at the plucking of hairs. As he tosses it back to the bed he sees below it that he is still erect. He's come all over his belly.

 _Filthy, filthy child. Grown to a filthy man._

Sunrise is just barely touching the window ledge, but he grabs for the phone next to his bed, dialing a number he expects to ring into an empty room forever.

"Hannibal Lecter's office," the smooth voice says.

 _Does he sleep?_

"I need to see you again," says Francis.

When he hangs up the call, he replaces the phone on the bedside table. And he weeps.


	2. Canto II: The Pagans (Hannibal)

At his palatial home in Roland Park, Hannibal examines his face in the mirror above the marble wash basin. Plumes of fragrant steam lick at the lower edge of the glass; the water within the basin is scented with tincture of Provence lavender and eucalyptus.

He runs a hand smoothed with oil over the stubble that emerges on his chin and cheeks. He's whetted the straight razor, shined it on a leather strop that now swings from the basin, lending its dark scent to the ambient fragrance of the room.

Breathing in deeply, he poises the razor's edge parallel to the line of his cheekbone. Hannibal has not cut himself while shaving in two decades.

Today: the third appointment with his Nameless Man. Despite an earnest line of questioning during their first session, he doesn't care about Francis Dolarhyde's grandmother. She is artifice. Had Dolarhyde come in with her overreaching shadow as the primary complaint, Hannibal would have been tempted to write him off the typical garden-variety mistreated child. The ill-favored get of yet another holy-rolling sexual sadist.

Tedious.

And Freudian, Heaven help them both. Were Hannibal capable of embarrassment, he might have been humiliated by proxy at the clunking, indelicate lump of a dream that Dolarhyde had brought to him during their last meeting. Therein, as expected, had been laid bare by almost all measures an elementary, dissectible subconscious. The nurturing/tormenting mother figure as the whip under which he trembles. The unattainable, in the form of the beautiful woman. Simplistic to the point of engendering boredom.

(If Hannibal dreams, he does not remember them.)

And yet with Dolarhyde there had been a sort of dark shifting—some surreptitious rearrangement—around the appearance of the co-worker in the dream. He had said that the co-worker had fallen again while his dream-self watched, and had appeared almost glad at succumbing to the fall. Then, the treading on human heads rising from the blood-gorged stream. Something was inverted there, a manipulation of guilt the outline of which Hannibal was beginning to pick out. It all led back to the nebulous reason why Dolarhyde was drawn to contact him in the first place.

Perhaps this time he will pry for further details of the accident. Should he judge Dolarhyde unready, he may ask him to speculate on the role of the dragon-mountain in his dream.

Hannibal runs the bright blade through the water in the basin. Dark hairs fall away and settle at its nadir.

This morning: it is time he sees his own psychiatrist, Dr. Bedelia DuMaurier. She is indulgent to a point, allowing him to talk of difficult patients under the aegis of her sworn clinical silence. Bedelia: born in Connecticut to old money, with the sometimes pandering stoicism of the rich. She has no need to do the job she does, but she does it well. In the fissures between talk of patients, she is able to tease out aspects of Hannibal's underlayer. He does not deny her this gift.

However, she does remain segregated in a suite of rooms in his mind palace. She may come and go in comfort with the illusion of liberty. Comfort, for most, serves as a viable substitute for freedom.

Over a breakfast of savory kidney slices on good ciabatta, Hannibal reads the Baltimore _Sun_ on his iPad Air. His lips compress into a tight line when he comes across an editorial written by Samy Prashad. The brash freshman city council member had based his campaign the prior year upon slashing the city's cultural arts budget in favor of funneling money toward the police force, and is still declaiming as loudly as ever on the subject. Hannibal frowns and clicks the screen over to black.

In an acknowledgement of professional equality (Hannibal assumes), unlike her other patients he meets Bedelia at her home, a stately Colonial just past the Beltway in Towson.

She greets him at the door with a demure, "Good morning, Hannibal."

A smile twitches in the corner of Hannibal's mouth. Bedelia DuMaurier is anything but demure. It is her front, or at least the most evolved of many. Hannibal delights in evoking her more obscure personae. He suspects strongly that there is no "real" Bedelia—only a choreographed aggregation of shifting masks. Learned behavior, less so for men than for women, who are taught to conceal desire and distaste with equal effort.

It is such that Hannibal knows: somewhere within her matrix Bedelia despises him. She is victim, predator, child, benefactor...but never fool.

It is also such that he might pity her, had he a sense of what pity is beyond its social construct. Still, it is an abstraction he wields deftly enough as to make it indistinguishable from truth. That which is superficial is rendered foundational by the standards of politeness, which is why Hannibal and Bedelia are able to continue their cordial probing. Whether or not he was at this very point last week slicing the lids from the eyes of an insolent tailor's apprentice is irrelevant.

That gives Hannibal comfort. He can, such as it is, be himself.

 _I am that I am._

He smiles without showing his teeth. "Good morning, Bedelia."

"Will you have coffee?" she asks.

"Please." He seats himself in the chair she typically occupies during their sessions, just to gauge her reaction. Predictably, there isn't one.

She sets the coffee on the table between them, sits, and inclines her head. "During our last session, we spoke about constancy. Not in the sense of that which is faithful, but that which is enduring."

"Specifically," Hannibal says, "the semantic difference between endurance and stasis."

"Only semantic?" Bedelia asks. "You didn't seem to think so last week."

"Theologically speaking, yes. From the Neo-Christian point of view, certainly."

"I didn't peg you for the peace-and-love type, Hannibal."

"Progressive religion is faith at its most insidious," says Hannibal, baiting.

Bedelia plays her part. "Do tell."

"The faithful expect constancy from their god, who expects constancy of them."

"Not of action, surely," says Bedelia.

"No, our little congregants have evolved long past that," Hannibal says. "They expect only constancy of attention. The universe need only be as responsive as it always has been."

"Which is to say 'not at all?'"

Hannibal smiles. "Who am I to pass judgment on the miraculous?"

"You are someone who doesn't believe in the miraculous."

"Miracles are change writ large."

"So they violate constancy."

"And by that logic change is a vice and stasis a virtue," Hannibal says.

"Only if you consider stasis and endurance interchangeable."

"In order to have faith, you must," he says.

Bedelia holds her coffee cup so the rim rests just below her lower lip. "So the constancy which God expects from us is itself constantly being violated."

"Which," Hannibal says, "by definition makes us miraculous."

"You have no interest in change," Bedelia says.

"As a psychotherapist, I have an interest in engendering change."

"At least you're not playing God."

"I am playing nothing."

Bedelia only shakes her head. "You're always playing something."

"I can only be that which is my essence," he tells her.

"Is this therapy or philosophy, Hannibal?"

"The two are indistinguishable."

"No," says Bedelia. "One involves truth."

Later, at the end of the session, as Hannibal is donning his overcoat, he asks Bedelia, "I wonder if you would accompany me to the Symphony Gala tomorrow evening." He is not, of course, speaking of the public gala, which takes place each October. This is a much more intimate affair, open only to top-echelon donors. White tie, four thousand dollars per plate, no media allowed. Silent auction items often include Harry Winston jewelry, Maserati coupes. A couple of years ago, the proprietorship of an entire hotel was on offer. As Hannibal recalls, a hedge fund manager picked it up for a thrifty fourteen million.

He knows she will decline, but he asks in any case. Bedelia is a beautiful woman, and Hannibal likes to surround himself with beautiful things.

As expected, she says, "I don't think that's a good idea."

He cannot help but goad her just a little. "Are you afraid it will test the boundaries of our patient-psychiatrist relationship?"

"Those boundaries are already tenuous. I'd rather they weren't more so."

"I understand."

"Do you?" she asks.

Hannibal leaves it at that, tipping the brim of his wool felt hat at Bedelia as she closes the door behind him.

Because of the nature of their relationship, he does not see her demurral as rejection, though he does field a polite rejection of any offer as he would anything else: with grace and deference. Truth be told, he would have been disappointed had Bedelia accepted. The dynamics of their interactions are too rarefied to be spoiled by any other brand of intimacy.

A chill is in the air as he opens the door to his dark blue Bentley Mulsanne and settles into the cool leather seat. He flips on the warming function. Hannibal is a man who dislikes discomfort, though he will, on occasion, suffer it for the sake of interest. He has just enough time to take an early lunch at home before Dolarhyde's therapy session at one o'clock.

He parks in the small private drive behind his home on Asphodel Street then removes his driving gloves and replaces them with slick navy kidskin. Hannibal eschews early-generation biometrics and instead has a keypad at his door. Five numbers: the birth date of his sister, Mischa.

The heavy iron AGA has already warmed the kitchen when he arrives. He has hung his coat and hat in the discreet closet by the door. From the stainless steel refrigerator he removes half of a rump roast studded with spiny cloves. The skin has crackled and pulled away like a dry creekbed, revealing the succulent fat underneath. Fat is the source of all flavor for meat, and those who pare it away do a disservice to the taste, in Hannibal's eminently informed opinion.

With a carving knife finer-edged than his shaving razor, he cuts two thick slices to pan-fry, rendering some of the fat and lending a bit of browning to the rare heart of the meat. He's prepared a brandy-lingonberry sauce and will have his meal served over charred endive.

The roast is, of course, the last vestige of the tailor's apprentice, who was taken without much fuss from the street near his unsavory studio flat after having twice intentionally foisted off poor stitching on Hannibal. There would not be a third time. The boy had no reverence for his handiwork, and was therefore given a demonstration of a craft well executed. The eyelids went first, not to force him to see but to blind in a wash of blood, as he had already witnessed his own inattention to detail and had chosen to ignore it. Twice.

After that, the fingers, each by turn. Hannibal will admit a certain affinity for the dramatic, and though a butcher's cleaver would have lent a certain panache to the removal, he often finds joy in the understated efficiency of a good pair of gardener's shears. He'd also intended to take the tongue, but the boy bit half of it off in the process.

Replete with the memory of the kill as well as its savory result, Hannibal guides the Bentley back to his office in Bolton Hill. He has given himself a half hour to look over his notes before Dolarhyde arrives. This patient, at least, is always punctual—something that Hannibal appreciates.

He seats himself at the desk with his notebook in front of him, paring paper-thin slivers from the point of a graphite drawing pencil with the AliMed titanium scalpel he keeps in his first desk drawer. From the lower drawer, he draws out a Waterford faceted decanter half-filled with Warre's Tercentenary port wine, 1970 vintage, and pours two fingers.

At the click of a button on a small remote at his left hand, the first vocal strains of Thomas Tallis's _Dum transisset sabbatum_ rise from the Blaupunkt sound system, identical to that which Hannibal has installed in his home. The acoustics of his office lend themselves to vocal pieces, polyphony especially—deep _basso profundo_ roiling like a miasma at his feet; the bell-clear bulge of tenor and alto straining against the walls, drawing his attention upward to the library level, where soprano and countertenor conduct their reedy courting. The sound cradles him by its avoidance of his body, skirting him, encapsulating him. Those who observe him, in whatever rudimentary manner they may have opportunity to do, would say that Hannibal is a creature of mind. More content to walk the halls of his own inner chateau than he truly is to poke around in the limited domiciles of others, whatever his business cards may say. This is not an untruth. Not necessarily.

But he is Epicurean in the truest sense and therefore also firmly grounded in the physical. Just as he sits in the womb of the music, so he also sits in his own flesh, feeling the pressure of one knee against the opposite calf where his legs are crossed. Feeling the leather of his chair bearing him up, pressing the fine scratch of good merino through the silk lining of his trousers and into his skin. The cool, diamond-shaped grit of the scalpel handle between his thumb and forefinger. Crisp Egyptian combed cotton at his cuffs, the intrusion of the cufflinks against the tender nock below the heel of his hand.

As the voices shudder and soar, as his waistcoat buttons creak, Hannibal executes within his mind an anatomical study of Francis Dolarhyde.

He is typically uninterested in the travails of those who are superficially scarred. In these cases the flesh informs the personality. It is mundane at best, puerile at worst. He puts much more stake in how the mind of the disfigured has informed his body.

Here, the obvious pursuit of physical perfection to spite a wounded face. And not only of physical but of _masculine_ perfection as compensatory reaction to belittlement on the part of the formative female authority figure.

Hannibal pictures Dolarhyde laid out in repose, as if sleeping. Not dead—that is a different sort of aesthetic. For the sake of the mental exercise, Hannibal prefers to imagine his chest gently rising and falling, the air around him blood-warm so as not to raise even a prickle of gooseflesh.

He is, for all intents and purposes, a slab of muscle. Rounded biceps shot through with visible veinwork, taut abdominals and strung trapezius. The feet are broad but high-arched, almost certainly the product of having been shoved into too-small shoes as a child. His hair is lighter, so the down that covers his lower legs is not wiry, dense, or dark.

The same is not so for his pubic hair. Hannibal, clinically but not with disinterest, wonders how many hands—including Dolarhyde's own—have held the heavy penis that rests now against the muscled thigh. Dolarhyde is circumcised, but of course he would be. Anything else would be _unclean_. Certainly the grandmother's hands are among those that have touched him; during their last session, Dolarhyde divulged (not without a great deal of muttering and picking at the skin of his fingers, dry scraps of which fell into the creases of his plain work trousers) that once when he was a child she had threatened to cut it off with a pair of sewing scissors.

That, Hannibal can affirm, is something that he has never done to any one of his victims. The ancient Chinese ate _hŭ biān_ , tiger's penis, for its supposed medicinal effects, but he himself has no interest in the organ as a gastronomical delicacy. He much prefers to enjoy it intact.

As part of his thought experiment, Hannibal imagines there, at the juncture of Dolarhyde's legs, the musk of the male sex. He imbues the conjured scent with the olfactory profile he had made of Dolarhyde when he first entered his office. It is a satisfactory fit. In his mind's eye, Hannibal traces the ridges of the hip bones, the narrow waist, the rapid broadening of the chest, lightly furred, not bare like a youth's.

The hands are capable, if somewhat rough. Hannibal envisions the neck, the strong jaw, and then...ah, yes. His shame. The still-angry hue of the perpendicular scar, set askance from the philtrum, interrupting the line of the lip at its lower border. It gives Dolarhyde a permanent sneer, something that is belied by the almost cherubic cast of the remainder of his face. At least now, as he rests. There is something of the feminine in it, though Dolarhyde would likely object violently to the comparison: darkly cleft, vulvar, _obscene_. That is not Hannibal's intent, nor is it his true perception as someone who is patently unaccustomed to associating femininity with weakness or profligacy.

Now, pinned to this mental display board, Dolarhyde cannot raise his broad hand to hide his scar. Hannibal traces the dusky line of it, feels the saliva-limned edge of one of the resin teeth of his bridge, probes the knotted trail where the ruptured halves of the palate are joined.

Cherubini's _Requiem_ in C minor begins, the voices soft.

Satisfied as he is with his presence in his own body and the inherent falsehood of a mental-physical dichotomy, Hannibal does not need to try to divorce himself from the sensation of exploring Francis Dolarhyde's body. It brings him intellectual pleasure; it brings him physical pleasure. The _eidolon_ of Dolarhyde he now looks at rests on its stomach, head turned to one side, only the whole and uninterrupted portion of the mouth showing. Hannibal shifts in his chair, uncrossing his legs.

He goes on to examine the whorls of hair below the ears, the long, black lashes. He scents the axilla, picking up the chemical smells of cheap antiperspirant, but is on the whole unbothered by the discovery. _This_ Dolarhyde, his face half-hidden in the crook of his arm, looks contented.

Hannibal on principle refuses to conjure any salacious telltales of abuse on Dolarhyde's bare skin—whip-marks, cigarette burns—regardless of whether or not they exist. For now his back is broad and unblemished. In his mind, Hannibal elongates the shadows below his scapulae into baroque and bruise-dark swirls. A pattern of emergent inner torment rather than outer. The tenebrae take on shapes of wings, of horns, cupping the lines of muscle— _deltoid, teres major, latissimus dorsi, gluteus._ —as might a hand. Gentle, guiding, paving the way for deeper prodding.

A body, a mind: cut from quite the same cloth.

His reverie is interrupted by the buzz of the intercom. Hannibal reaches for the glass at his right hand to find it untouched; the meniscus of the amber liquid quavers with his movement.

He touches a button underneath the desk. "Just a moment, Mr. Dolarhyde, if you please."

When Dolarhyde comes in, he stoops, as if being taller in Hannibal's presence is an embarrassment. "I'm early. I didn't know whether you had another patient before…" he trails off.

"As luck would have it, you're my only patient today."

Dolarhyde nods. He looks past Hannibal's shoulder to see the decanter and the glass on the desk.

"Do you drink, Mr. Dolarhyde?"

"Not really." His brow is furrowed; he clutches his hat.

"I don't mean to imply anything," Hannibal says. "I was partaking when you came in. It appears you've caught me out."

"I can come back…"

"I'd like to invite you to join me."

Dolarhyde blinks in shock.

"We'll call it 'therapeutic,'" Hannibal says.

"No, thank you," Dolarhyde says. Then, abashed, he adds, "I'm going to work."

"Of course." He gestures to the chair, and they take their accustomed places. Hannibal fields a small _frisson_ of pleasure in remembering having taken Bedelia's chair earlier that morning. It is not quite time to subject Dolarhyde to that peculiar uncertainty, though Hannibal will not brook much more talk of the grandmother. "So you do drink on occasion?" he asks.

"Yes," says Dolarhyde. He pauses. "Wine."

"Do you remember what we spoke about last session?"

"My dream."

"Have you dreamed since?"

There is a slight but detectable hesitation. "No."

"Have you heard anything more with regard to you co-worker? Andy?"

Dolarhyde looks at the floor. "He's still in a coma."

"Do you think he'll wake?" Hannibal asks.

"I don't know."

"What will happen when he does?"

Now, there—the panicked look.

"What will you feel?" Hannibal asks.

"Happy for his family."

"His family," Hannibal echoes. "But you don't have a family, do you, Mr. Dolarhyde?"

"Grandmother—"

"No." Hannibal cuts him off. "We won't talk about your grandmother today."

Dolarhyde looks chastened.

Hannibal changes tack, softens his tone. "I would rather talk about you. You without her."

"I am no one. In my head." It is said with a dolorous matter-of-factness, yet even within it there is a sort of half-accusation, a callback.

Hannibal suppresses a smile. Dolarhyde is not incapable of turning Hannibal's words around to suit his own ends. "I suggest, rather, that you are many things," he says.

Dolarhyde gives no response.

"You read philosophy, don't you, Mr. Dolarhyde?"

"Some."

"Do you know the work of Ibn-Sinā, called Avicenna?"

Dolarhyde shakes his head.

"His inquiry, as is the wont of any human mind, was made into the nature and question of existence. Avicenna put forth that there are three types of being: the impossible, the contingent, and the necessary. The impossible being is that which cannot exist. The necessary being is that which exists by its own virtue, or due to itself as a cause. The contingent being, however, before actuation, is in a state of potentiality. That is to say, it can either be or not be, dependent on inner or outer forces. Do you understand?"

Dolarhyde nods.

Though he is not certain of comprehension, Hannibal continues. "He used the idea of the necessary being, as something that causes cause, in his argument for a creator god. I would prefer to use it to refer to the self. When I said during our first session that you were no one, I meant—" he stops to allow Dolarhyde to expound.

The pause is excruciating, almost tempting Hannibal to change tack again.

Then, Dolarhyde speaks. "You meant...I was no one _yet_."

"Just so," says Hannibal. "You are that contingent being. Able to exist entirely through outside forces and entirely through inner forces without contradiction."

"There is…" Dolarhyde pauses to sound out the word, "contradiction."

"Yes, for now. Beyond the dependence of infancy, self as we know it is a choice. Not to choose is to be buffeted by many winds, endlessly."

"What am I choosing?" There is hope in the tone.

"The necessary being," Hannibal says. "The benefit of infancy is also blamelessness. The contingent being does not have that advantage, whether he makes a choice or not. The uncommitted are punished for their indecision simply by virtue of leaving infancy. Do you understand?"

"I think so."

"Choice entails the possibility for both active virtue and active sin. Do you believe in sin, Mr. Dolarhyde?"

Dolarhyde only avoids Hannibal's eyes.

"Do you believe in God?"

"No."

"Good. Nor do I," says Hannibal. "Of course, if we are still evoking Avicenna's worldview, the highest virtue is that which is closest to the necessary being, that is to say: God himself. But, as you well know, God isn't very kind, and that is—suffice to say—the least of his deficits."

"He isn't just?" Dolarhyde asks.

"He isn't _consistent_ ," counters Hannibal. "Delivers his people unto freedom one day only to lead them to slaughter the next. What does that suggest?"

"There is no God."

"Or, alternately, that he is a morally inferior model for high virtue. So, in a godless world, what would be the superior model for virtue?"

Dolarhyde blinks.

Once again, as Hannibal is on the cusp of disappointment, Dolarhyde speaks.

"Myself," he says.

Hannibal smiles, indulgent. "The self. Of course."

"But I don't know who that is."

"Let's look at your dream. All of those images, let's assume that each is a part of you. Which one would you call the impossible being?"

Dolarhyde answers right away. "The woman."

Hannibal shakes his head. "Your grandmother. She has already existed and has ceased to do so. She is impossible."

Before him, Dolarhyde clenches his fists.

"We know that you are the contingent being. Now: which is the necessary being?" Hannibal sits back, fingers steepled, waiting. He is pleased to see the daybreak of comprehension across Dolarhyde's face.

"The...dragon?"

Hannibal nods. "That which exists due only to itself. _Before me you rightly tremble_."

"I understand," says Dolarhyde.

"And who is Andy? Your co-worker?"

Dolarhyde's eyes go wide.

"He is merely the catalyst," Hannibal says, giving the words a soothing tone. _Another day, then. They have so much time._

"And the woman? Who is she?" asks Dolarhyde. His expression is earnest to the point of pleading.

"You tell me."

Very quietly, his eyes clouded with nascent tears, Dolarhyde says, "Hope."

As they stand following the end of the session, Hannibal says, "Until you decide what you'd prefer, I'd like to call you 'Francis.' Would you allow that?"

A nod.

"I'd also like you to call me 'Hannibal,' if you can."

Francis nods again.

"Very well, then. I'll see you next week, Francis."

Nodding a third time, he steps outside and pulls the door closed behind him.

Moving soundlessly on the carpet, Hannibal walks to his desk. A tap of the remote button and Allegri's _Miserere_ filters into the cool silence. Evaporation has left a thin crust of port wine sugar around the inner rim of the glass. Hannibal picks it up, swirls the liquid, and sips. Leaving it uncovered, exposed to the charged air of his office, has brought out notes of cherry and of hardwood that splash across his palate. His senses are full of the wine. His hand, though they never touched, smells to him like Francis's skin.

The young valet at the Armoury takes Hannibal's key with polite efficiency. Quiet, dependable, discreet staff is a prerequisite at the club, considering its typical clientele. Tonight, the neo-Medieval structure plays host to the Donors' Society Symphony Ball.

Before the open gates, on the finial pedestals of which sit stone lions each bearing a shield embossed with the Cross of St. George, Hannibal adjusts his cuffs, his white silk bow tie. He has chosen the _tatsu_ cufflinks tonight—engraved white gold—which belonged to his uncle.

The ring-shaped forecourt has at its center a marble fountain with the Tree of Life as its motif. The water still burbles over carven leaves as the temperature has not yet dipped below freezing this autumn.

Another tacit attendant takes Hannibal's overcoat of slate-gray virgin wool as he enters what used to be an estate gifted to a son-by-marriage of the famed Carroll family. It boasts the requisite two-story entryway, graced with a Schonbek La Scala crystal chandelier. A woman in her forties wearing a strapless green gown looks him over and then turns away to speak to her dinner companion, a portly, bearded man in a tailcoat. Hannibal is mildly surprised to see that the woman sports a small tattoo on her left shoulder blade.

He takes a flute of champagne from a butler's enameled tray and walks behind the Grand Staircase to the ballroom beyond, from which emerges a tapestry of voices as understated as the noise of the fountain. As he is customarily early, Hannibal sees the ensemble is still getting settled. He is pleased to see that it is the premier chamber group from the Peabody School, called _Orfeo_ , though one of the violists has been replaced by a woman he does not know.

"Dr. Lecter," comes a warm baritone from over his shoulder.

Hannibal turns to see Darius Paget, the president of the Donors' Society.

"So glad you were able to join us," says Paget, his bald pate shining in the golden light from the wall sconces.

"I wouldn't miss it," says Hannibal.

"And where is your date this evening?"

"My friend, unfortunately, had a prior commitment."

Paget claps him on the shoulder. "I quite liked the woman you brought last year. I assume it didn't work out."

Hannibal's date to the gala the prior year had been a visiting scholar to Johns Hopkins, lecturing in Near East politics. She had been as lively in the lecture hall as she had been unenthused and immobile in bed. Hannibal prefers his sexual partners be energetic and receptive. "She, alas, returned to her post in Toronto," he says.

Paget winks. "A shame. Well, perhaps you'll find some company here tonight." He turns to go.

"Just a moment," Hannibal says. "Can you tell me who the second violist is? I'm afraid I don't recognize her."

"I don't know her, either. Charlotte, I'm sad to say, was in a rather severe accident. They say she may never play again."

For no reason that he can name, Hannibal summons an image of Francis Dolarhyde's co-worker, lying in his hospital bed surrounded by beeps and clicks that sound like the music of madness. A rich C from the cello splits the air and words around the room falter for a moment, breaths held, expectant.

"I'm terribly sorry to hear that," Hannibal says.

Paget gestures toward a corner of the room with his meaty hand. "We're taking donations for her recovery fund, if you'd like to contribute."

"I certainly will."

Standing by the table indicated by Paget is a tall and very slim man. Instead of a bow tie he wears a thin silk scarf draped over the collar of his tuxedo jacket. Unlike most of the other men in the room, he has neglected to shave for the occasion, and sports a short salt-and-pepper scruff of beard. His hair is going gray in small, aristocratic wings at his temples. The man smiles slightly, inclining his head in Hannibal's direction.

Hannibal nods in return.

Paget has seen the look pass between them. He gives Hannibal a small salute and turns, melting into the growing crowd.

The musicians begin with Schubert's quintet in C. An interesting choice, Hannibal thinks. As it turns out, the new violist is quite the virtuoso, but she plays like a soloist rather than riding the currents of the ensemble. The effect is jarring to Hannibal's keen ear. He stands, brows furrowed, watching the girl's fingers travel over the strings just a split second in advance of those of her counterpart.

He has nearly finished his champagne when he catches a scent of cologne. If he is correct—and he is rarely mistaken—Annick Goutal's Eau d'Hadrien.

A voice, accented with the soft tones of southern central England, speaks next to his shoulder. "How do you get two violists to play in tune with one another?"

Hannibal turns to see the tall, slim man with whom he'd made eye contact earlier in the evening. He arches an eyebrow. "Kill one of them."

The man smiles. "Now, you see, you've spoiled my joke."

"Am I correct?"

"You are," he says, and puts out a long-fingered hand. "Anthony Dimmond."

Hannibal takes the hand, which is cool and dry, introducing himself. "Would that be the Anthony Dimmond of Dimmond and Wellesley?" he asks. Dimmond is half of a partnership that brokers fine art in the city. Hannibal has purchased two of the pieces he keeps in his home from Eugene Wellesley.

"The very same."

"So your artistic appreciation extends beyond the visual?"

"The arts are," Dimmond says, chuckling at his own joke, "best enjoyed in concert, I find. Though I couldn't tell you what they're playing. As you may be able to guess, I'm relatively new to the symphony scene."

"This is Mozart's quintet in D major," Hannibal says. "A popular piece."

"Perhaps you can be my guide through these uncharted waters."

"I do a good deal of guiding by profession."

"What do you do, if you don't mind my asking?"

"I am a psychiatrist."

"Oh, dear," says Dimmond. "Should I expect my brain to be picked apart mercilessly?"

"You'd have to see me during office hours," says Hannibal, giving a slim smile.

"Would you be so good as to join me in another drink?" Dimmond asks.

"Certainly."

From the bar, Hannibal orders the Pommery Cuvée Louise. Dimmond chooses a Macallan 25-year aged whiskey. The chamber ensemble has moved on to Bartók's String Quartet No. 5. Hannibal clicks the rim of his flute against Dimmond's tumbler.

"Is that Clive Christian you're wearing?" Dimmond asks.

"It is. I'm surprised you could make out the top notes over the Goutal."

Dimmond gives an embarrassed laugh, running his thumb over his bottom lip. "I do have a terrible habit of using more than is called for."

"Not at all," says Hannibal. "I merely have a sensitive nose."

"Eau d'Hadrien is quite... _singular_ , I admit. I'd even say a bit brash."

"As was its namesake."

"Did you know," Dimmond says, "Hadrian had his lover, Antinous, deified following his death? He was said to have had the most beautiful buttocks in the kingdom."

Hannibal raises his eyebrows. His suspicion is more than confirmed; Dimmond is flirting. "Not that Hadrian was partial."

Dimmond raises his glass.

A smattering of laughter breaks out in the corner of the room, momentarily overpowering the low strains of the quintet.

Both Hannibal and Dimmond look over, but it is only Hannibal who recognizes the central figure of the group. Samy Prashad.

His eyes go hard; Dimmond must notice.

"Do you know him?"

"Not personally. If you'll excuse me for just a moment." Hannibal's rage is controlled—thin and white as a blade of light. He reins it, bends it, pulls it around him where it settles like a corona. "Councilman Prashad."

The man half-turns, looking over his shoulder. "That's right. And you are?"

"Dr. Hannibal Lecter." Neither Hannibal nor Prashad extends a hand. Hannibal continues. "I've been a longtime supporter of the symphony's cause. I had no idea you were of a similar mind, if you'll forgive me, especially owing to your public sentiment."

Prashad laughs. "Oh, you know how it is. You have to tell the voters what they want to hear. What I have in my personal interests and what I spend my personal money on has nothing to do with what I think is best for this city."

"Though the city pays your salary," Hannibal says.

"The city also subsidizes the symphony, though not to the extent you'd probably like. That's what donors like yourself are for. Am I right, Dr. Lecter?"

"And, apparently, yourself, Mr. Prashad."

"Something like that. If you'll excuse me, I was just offering this gentleman here my condolences on his marriage."

The man next to Prashad laughs.

Hannibal nods and crosses the floor once again.

"That looked tense," Dimmond says.

"The councilman and I have, to say the very least, differing viewpoints on the utility of the arts."

"Well, you won't get any disparagement from me," says Dimmond.

"I expect not."

Dimmond steps closer, his arm pressing against Hannibal's. Warm, firm. "If it makes you feel better, from my observations, I think Hadrian would approve."

Hannibal favors him with a genuine smile. He drains the champagne and sets it on the bar, then places his hand on Dimmond's neck, drawing him in. "I'd like very much to take you home," he says.

Later, Hannibal has Dimmond's long legs slung over his shoulders and is pushing into him with deep, full thrusts. His hair is loose and spills over his brow. He clutches Dimmond's hips, raising him from the bed.

For his part, Dimmond is pawing at the headboard, manicured nails scrabbling along the polished wood surface. His eyes are slitted and his mouth slack: total abandon. His rigid cock bobs against his abdomen with each thrust. Hannibal wraps strong fingers around it and Dimmond's eyes fly open.

"Yes," he says.

"'Yes?' Tell me what you'd like me to do."

"Keep touching me," Dimmond breathes.

Hannibal begins to stroke him slowly, in counterpoint with his thrusts.

Dimmond squeezes his eyes shut.

"Look at me," says Hannibal, thrusting deeply and angling his hips upward.

"Oh, God."

Hannibal goes still, reaches out with his unoccupied hand to run his forefinger over Dimmond's lips. "He is not here. I am. Tell me what you want."

Dimmond groans, his eyes wide. "Make me come." He grasps Hannibal's hand and takes the finger in his mouth.

Exhaling, Hannibal begins to stroke him again, this time with increased pressure and speed.

"Please," says Dimmond.

"'Please?'"

"Don't stop fucking me."

Obliging, Hannibal begins to move his hips once more, though slowly. He is unwilling to allow himself to orgasm before his partner does, as a courtesy.

By all appearances, however, Dimmond is close to his own precipice. He is grasping Hannibal's hand tight as Hannibal works him. Hannibal leans in, resting his torso on Dimmond's thighs. The added pressure pushes Dimmond over and he shouts into the silence of the room. Hannibal feels liquid warmth spill into his hand. "Soon, now," he cautions as Dimmond regains his breath.

Dimmond reaches up, draws Hannibal toward him with firm hands at his nape, kisses his lips. "Come inside me," he whispers against Hannibal's mouth.

"Yes," says Hannibal, and then it is all over in a wash, a torrent of sensation.

Later still, Dimmond rests his head on Hannibal's chest, playing slim fingers through the hair there.

"Tell me about your recent acquisitions," says Hannibal, stroking Dimmond's upper arm. He feels the smile the request prompts.

"I've just gotten a Schiele. Minor work, not a figure study. 'Chestnut Tree at Lake Constance.'"

"From what I recall, beautiful composition," Hannibal says.

"I take that to mean you're not interested."

"I tend to reserve interest for rather higher-stakes work."

Dimmond props himself up on one elbow. "Well, in that case, you're sworn to secrecy on this."

"You may depend on my discretion," Hannibal says.

"Gene and I believe we have a Blake. It's a sketch, of course, from a notebook—and God only knows where that was picked up—but it's a fairly complete early rendering of 'The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed in Sun.'"

"Unlikely," Hannibal says, "but intriguing."

"That's what I said. But we're having it authenticated now. Shall I let you know how the tests turn out?"

Hannibal narrows his eyes. "I may want to see it before it goes to auction, if you would allow it."

"That's a tall order, sir," Dimmond says, "but possible. What can I expect in return?"

Hannibal exhales slowly through his nose. "What would you like?"

Kissing Hannibal's nipple, Dimmond reaches for his hand and guides it down to his groin once again.

"I see," Hannibal says. He takes Dimmond's wrists and instead rolls over and pins him on his back.

As Dimmond arches into his touch, Hannibal moves down his body, pressing his lips against Dimmond's hipbone before taking him in his mouth.

It is just as well, Hannibal reasons, that Dimmond did not choose to stay for breakfast. It is a simple affair: poached eggs with caper relish and Thai pink pepper.

Sitting at his table, he pulls up a photograph of the completed Blake painting, "The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed in Sun." It is staged so that the viewer cannot see any one of the Dragon's seven faces. Only its heavily muscled back and hindquarters, the tail curling between its legs to entrap the light-enrobed woman. As Hannibal recalls, in the book of Revelation the woman with the starry crown avoids the great tempter's clutches and flees into exile. Her escape, though, is temporary. The Great Red Dragon is a completist, an expert in finality. Much like Hannibal himself.


	3. Canto III: The Lustful (Francis)

When he has finished lifting, this time Francis finds it hard to quiet his pounding heart. The exertion has only spurred the confusion in his head. Instead of his hard-won white blankness he sees red—a churning sea of it—as if a thousand Andys had split their collective skulls on the hard edge of his fury. It washes him, enrobes him. Renders him irrevocably stained.

A knot rises in his throat. He doesn't want to, but he will, just to make the clamor go away. He closes his eyes.

In the theater of his memory, he watches the woman at the deli turn around to greet him. This time she is beautiful, but her mouth twists downward in disgust when she sees him.

 _Did you get in a knife fight?_ she asks again.

This time Francis nods, and suddenly there is a knife in his hand. Holding it by the blade like a pencil, he draws a red line from the woman's nostril to the edge of her lip. The sharp edge cuts his fingers, too, and his blood mingles with hers. It is so bright he almost has to look away.

In the attic room, his cock is already hard when he reaches into his sweatpants and takes it in his hand.

There is fear in her eyes now. Francis can see himself reflected in her dark, wide pupils, and he tries to turn his head, but he must also concentrate on the task at hand. His face must remain in her eyes. He moves the blade down her body, starting at the notch between her collarbones and going down, down to the cleft between her legs. Slicing her open feels like drawing his hand through water.

The woman opens like a flower, her red heart beating below the wings of her ribcage.

 _No_ , she says.

 _Yes_ , Francis answers.

His hand is sweaty and merciless on his cock—squeezing, burning. He is so _very_ close.

Bending to the tableau in his mind, he dips his palm into the blood that is welling into the woman's abdominal cavity. He raises it, watches the drops splash back into their pool. The blonde woman's eyes have gone glassy, like a mirror. Francis takes another palmful and anoints himself with it.

He roars into the enclosed space as he comes, the sound hitting the boards and slapping back at his sensitized ears. He cringes.

 _What a mess you've made._

One time as a child of about eleven, he had been suffering from an intestinal upset, struggling to hide it from Grandmother. Of course, he'd been overcome in his helplessness and lack of will and had been unable to stop himself from letting go in his trousers. Grandmother had forced him to wash every hour under the freezing tap outside the house, scrubbing his skin raw with a boot brush. As he had lain in agony that night, he wondered why the pain also seemed so comforting. An indicator that Grandmother truly knew what was best for him?

Now, in the shower, he greets the pain again with relief. The brush hisses over his skin, the sore muscles underneath kneaded by the pressure. The long sleeves of his uniform will cover the redness as it fades.

Standing in the tub shivering, Francis turns off the tap. He steps out onto the floor—naked, dripping, abraded. With one shaking hand he takes up the grit-encrusted cup that holds Grandmother's dentures and places it under his nose, inhaling the long-ago cigarette stench.

"I'm sorry," he says, the words echoing hollow in the glass.

Trying not to touch the inner rim, he uses two fingers to gently pry the teeth loose from their moorings of gunk. A new, fouler scent rises as he wrests them free, and they rattle like the animal bones he used to keep in a cookie tin under his bed. He raises them from the glass and holds them in the palm of his hand, feeling the little, sharp edges against his skin. Sharper than they should be.

 _No_. Francis shakes his head. What would Hannibal think? Here, giving obeisance to a memory, while wasn't it Grandmother who had groveled and shrunk before the apparition that was his dragon-mountain? But, God, it is so hard to think of a self that is extricable from Grandmother. He has no idea how to be that necessary being.

Tears sting the corners of his eyes as he places the teeth with due reverence back into the glass and the glass onto the vanity once again. The tears that come later while he is scrubbing the attic floor he blames on the burning scent of the bleach.

Promptly at four o'clock, as usual, Francis replaces Levon behind the guard's desk. Surprise bordering on shock rises within him when he sees that not only are all of the cameras working, screens quivering with the intermittent activity, but that two screens on the left-hand side show perfectly clear pictures. One, he knows, is the hallway to the Life Sciences building from the student union. The other is a seldom-used angle in the parking deck. There are no cars parked on that level.

Hammond's shout from the main office makes Francis startle, his heart contracting with something close to pain.

"D, is that you?"

"Uh-huh."

"Got something for you." Hammond is still shouting through the open door.

Francis waits, frozen in place. "Do you want me to—"

But as he speaks, Hammond emerges, smiling behind an enormous array of multi-colored blooms. The colors are hard to look at: insistent orange and yellow, venous purple, the green of the stems and leaves. "These are for you, bud."

"For me? Why?"

Hammond places them on top of the desk. The glass distorts his face into a heavy-mugged caricature.

Francis must crane his neck to see around the huge vase.

"Well, they're not from _me_ ," Hammond says. "Andy's wife dropped them by. She had to go pick up her kids from school, but she said she wanted to thank the guy who helped Andy."

 _I didn't help him_ , Francis wants to say. Instead he remains silent.

"There's a card, too," Hammond tells him, handing over a cream-colored envelope.

It is clear that Hammond will not leave until Francis has opened it, so he carefully breaks the adhesive seal and takes out the card. A saccharine thing, with illustrations of pink roses twining around its borders. Within the printed arbor, it reads "Thank You" in sweeping script.

When Francis opens the card, a photograph falls out, landing in his lap. He places the card on the desk and retrieves it. It is a family portrait, obviously taken around the holidays as everyone is dressed in warm clothing—sweaters and the like. This is clearly Andy's family. The two sons, both smiling with that over-eager rictus that denotes children's excitement, are carbon copies of Andy himself, complete with red hair and snub noses. A woman Francis must assume is Andy's wife holds one of their children on her lap. She is fair, with golden-blonde hair and barely visible eyebrows. Her severe Nordic beauty has been tempered by a little bit of extra weight, but she is still lovely. Radiant, with two spots of crimson color high on her cheeks, wearing a green velvet dress with a small white lace collar. There is a brooch at her throat. A cameo, much like the one that Grandmother used to wear.

Francis pushes that particular image from his mind.

"What's it say?" Hammond asks.

 _Oh. The card_. Francis hands it across the desk to Hammond, who reads it with noticeable vicarious relish.

"Gosh, that's sweet of her," he says. "I really admire the hell—excuse me—the heck out of people who can hold themselves together through something like this. If it was my wife or—God forbid—one of my kids, I'd be a complete wreck. Did you hear they've got Andy on a breathing machine now?"

"No," Francis says, ducking behind the distortion of the vase. He wonders what Hammond sees from his side of the glass and winces.

"Awful thing." Hammond hands the card back. "Anyway, where can I put these for you?"

"The office," says Francis, carefully sounding out the fricatives.

"No, no. We gotta leave 'em out here. Brightens the place up a little bit." He pushes them over toward the wall.

Francis's vision is still significantly blocked, but he says only, "Thank you."

"No worries, D. Have a decent night, okay?"

When Hammond has gone, locking the office after him, Francis rises from his chair and grabs the vase of flowers. Closer to them he can smell their faint spiciness, with just the first edge of the rotting-sweet. Even though this is the first he has ever received, he has never understood why people give one another dying things as gestures of thanks or affection. But even living things possess inevitability. It just is typically not observable in such a short time. Francis has seen living things become dying things long before these flowers.

The bulk of the bouquet is made up of cone-shaped blossoms, vivid orange at the tips of the petals then darkening to a violent sunset shade within the tapering bowl. Fragile white stalks meander from the flower's center. He tries not to think of ribs.

Walking out from behind the desk, he goes over to the corner table and places the bouquet on it, next to the coffeemaker. It seems only appropriate.

Returning to the desk, he picks up the gaudy card from where Hammond had left it and opens it to find it blank but for a couple of sentences printed in a neat hand.

 _Dear Mr. Dolarhyde_ , it reads, _I wanted to thank you for responding so quickly when Andy had his accident. If not for you, he might not be with us today._

Francis closes the card, paranoia squirming ribbon-like through his mind. Andy's wife had signed it on their children's behalf as well as on her own:

 _Sincerely,  
Brian, Bradley, and Helen Jacobi_

He whispers her name, _Helen Jacobi_ , pleased that his mouth can easily form the sounds. The card he places gently in the trash can by his feet. The photograph he picks up and tucks into his wallet.

There is a man standing at the glass door when he seats himself behind the desk again. The man is not looking at him; he is talking to someone out of Francis's line of sight, gesturing with exaggerated motions.

In a moment he turns and opens the door. He stares at Francis for a beat, then says, "Listen, man. We're trying to get to the Life Sciences building. You know where that is?"

Though he is loath to talk, Francis stands up, preparing to give directions when two women walk through the door, arm in arm. They are laughing, and the face of the man who first spoke to Francis twists into a sour look.

"Is this it, Carl?" the white woman asks. She is middle-aged, wearing a bulky parka. The woman who holds his arm, the black woman, is younger. Her eyes are wide and Francis is struck dumb by her beauty.

"Oh, I smell flowers," she says.

"Yeah, they're over there," says the man named Carl. He turns to Francis again. "Hey, buddy, can you just tell us where the building is? We're running late."

"If you go out the door and turn left, you'll s— you'll come to a covered walkway," Francis begins, almost so softly he can't hear himself.

"Can you speak up?"

Francis takes a deep breath. The beautiful woman is looking directly at him, smiling. "Out the door, turn left. Take the covered walkway to the right, then go down the...stairs. There is a tunnel underneath the union building that leads to the...building you want."

"Good, good," says Carl. "Okay, ladies. Out, out, out."

"Thank you," says the beautiful woman. Her words are nearly but not quite lost on the sucking wind from the doorway.

And then the door is shut and all three are gone.

Francis's heart plummets, but leaps again when he realizes that the hallway to Life Sciences is showing up clearly on his bank of screens. He sits down heavily, the chair's casters complaining. The photograph of Andy's family flutters to the floor at his feet.

On the lower left-hand screen he watches Carl, the brusque man, come into view. He is attempting to take the beautiful woman's arm, but she shakes him off, her broad smile faltering somewhat. Francis narrows his eyes.

Her middle-aged companion looks up as she passes, but the beautiful woman does not. She only regains her smile, places a comforting hand on her escort's bicep, and moves out of the camera's wall-eyed stare.

Francis stares at the screen long after they are gone.

Francis hasn't prayed for years, and does not do so now as he prepares to sleep in the early morning after his shift. Kneeling on the warped floor by his bed, he instead begs his own mind not to show him the beautiful woman who caught the scent of his flowers. He wants to see her again—oh, Lord, yes—but not in the same way that he visualized the woman from the deli. Not in the same way his mind presented him with teasing images of Andy's wife, making him dig the heels of his hands so hard into his eyes that dark spots blossomed across his field of vision for a few seconds afterward.

Yet when he closes his eyes, he sees the lovely dark woman from his dragon-dream, the smiling woman's face superimposed over the image. She is dressed in the same vivid orange as the blossoms in the bouquet. Still, there are great black rents in her gown. They could be ornaments, or they could be rips in the very fabric of her as she prepares, arms extended, to fly into nothingness again.

He will take it, this bloodless tearing, if she must be torn.

 _I saw her_ , he wants to tell Hannibal, _The woman from my dream._ But he doesn't.

Instead, he says, "I dreamed about a woman."

"Again?" Hannibal asks.

"A different woman," says Francis.

Hannibal presses his hands together, as if praying, his elbows resting on his thighs. "Do you often dream of women?"

"Sometimes."

"Would you consider yourself heterosexual, Francis?"

Francis feels heat creeping into his cheeks. "I don't dream about them like that."

"How do you think of them?"

A pause. "Like flowers."

"This woman you dreamed about, what kind of flower was she?" Hannibal asks.

"A lily." Francis had looked up the types of flowers in the bouquet that Helen Jacobi had given him. "An orange one."

Hannibal tilts his head to the side. "In the Japanese _Hanakotoba_ tradition, the orange lily, or _Sayuri_ , signifies hatred or vengeance."

Panic and denial slam through Francis. He sits back in his chair, eyes wide. "It was red on the inside."

"As are we all," says Hannibal.

"I don't hate women." It sounds whining, childish.

"I don't mean to suggest that you do. Only that they may be...unfamiliar. Have you ever had sexual intercourse, Francis?"

The shame nearly overwhelms him. He shakes his head, gripping the arms of the chair.

"'Can a man take fire in his bosom and his clothes not be burned?'" Hannibal says. "'Or can a man walk on hot coals and his feet not be scorched?'"

"What does that mean?"

"It is from the book of Proverbs. It means only that there is a certain harm in desiring. Both for the one who wants and for she—or he—who is wanted."

When Francis answers, it is almost a whisper. "I _do_ want."

Hannibal smiles. "Then you are merely quite human."

Francis expects to be comforted, but something in the sentiment disappoints him. "Do you want?"

Hannibal pauses, making Francis certain for a moment that he won't answer.

"I desire many things," he says at last.

"Do you get them?"

"Yes," says Hannibal, "if only as abstractions. Though if we follow the Platonic idealist model, the essence of a thing is more real and more pure than what is supposedly tangible. In that manner, I'm certain you have gotten what you desire, Francis. Many times over."

Francis is almost certain he knows what is real and what exists only inside his head. He knows, logically if not functionally, that Grandmother is buried, her mouth stopped up with grave mud, unable to speak. He has long thought of her—no less his dreams or fantasies—as indwelling, winding toward his core and dependent on inevitable displacement of less requisite parts. And he has fought these spines, these tendrils. Oh, yes.

It is thus that there is a strange vertigo in thinking, after his session with Hannibal, of dream-as-extension. Action as a limb of imagination, however stunted or vestigial.

Was it one of these excrescences that had reached from him and thrown Andy across the room, and not his own hands at all? If so, then even in their infancy and relative frailty they had power. Could they be excised from his skin like lesions? Did he even want them gone?

It is why he goes back to the deli at Lexington Market, bones clattering with both fear and exhilaration. He wills the blonde-haired woman to be there, whole and unruptured. He wills her not to be there, her co-workers wide-eyed with horror and awe as they recount finding her transformed. A person once, and now a flesh-shored sea of red, her cartography islets and peninsulas of viscera and bone.

The thought terrifies Francis. It makes him exultant.

She is there, though, and he can see her when he walks in, but not before she has seen him. There is recognition in her face. She smiles—a forced one—and her teeth are tobacco-stained. It causes Francis to recoil. Both stop, a few paces and a dirty glass counter apart, and watch one another, wary.

 _The essence of a thing is purer than the thing itself._

Francis takes in a long breath to calm his racing heart. If he had unzipped her in essence alone, could this woman—this inferior embodiment—have woken early this morning to a sense of indistinct unease? Did she leap out of bed as if prodded? Did she feel anything at all? Francis is relieved. He is disappointed.

"You gonna order something?" she asks.

"No," says Francis. As he turns, he hears her whisper to the bald man behind the counter with her: _That's him_.

He tells himself he doesn't regret it later, even though a keen blade of hunger is slicing through his gut.

If he can persuade the new parking garage guard (what was his name?) to watch the screens for a short time, he can get a soda in the student union. It will tide him over until the end of his shift. Francis prefers to work out when he is hungry, as well. It makes him feel lean, adding to the effort-fueled shaking of his muscles.

However, they've fixed the heating in the guard cabin at last, and the new guard may not want to make the cold trek all the way to the main hub to spell Francis for the sake of a vending machine run.

Though he does not typically drink it at night, he decides to have a coffee after the slow passage of thirty hungry, uneventful minutes watching his bank of screens. The two on the left side, uppermost and lowermost, are still showing clear and unfuzzed.

The flowers by the coffeemaker are withered and drooping already, desiccated by the hot air forced at regular, hissing intervals through the grates near the ceiling. Francis has shut the one above his station, not even having to stand on a chair to do so, as he often gets too warm in his polyester uniform. Today he can roll up his sleeves; the violent redness on his skin has faded.

He nearly drops the coffee (black, no sugar) when he returns to his station and sees movement in the Life Sciences hallway. There, the man named Carl. And the middle-aged woman, though she does not walk arm-in-arm with anyone. Two, three more people straggle after, all looking at the back of Carl's head rather than up at the camera. Still, Francis can tell that none of them is the beautiful woman. He feels her absence like a hand squeezing his throat.

The parade of passingly familiar faces flickers past the camera's eye and is gone. Francis takes a sip of the coffee, which is already going cold. Tendrils of frigid air from the outside wrap around the hand that holds the cup a split second before he realizes the door has opened. When he looks up, though, he sees no one standing behind the glass.

A loud crack sounds from the doorway, and a long white stick or baton tipped with orange is wedged between the door and its jamb. It would be comical had Francis not realized its owner is struggling.

"I'll help," he says. "Hold on."

"Nah," says the beautiful woman, her slim hand now forcing the door wider, "I got it."

The cane clatters to the floor.

"Dammit," she says. "Pardon my French."

She has deep brown eyes and is offering an apologetic grin. Francis holds the door open so she can come inside. He holds out the cane to her but she doesn't take it.

"Did you see my cane?" she asks. "I hate the thing, but I need it sometimes."

"It's here," Francis says.

"Mind putting it in my hand?" the woman asks, her smile growing wider.

It is only then that Francis realizes she is blind. His fingers gentle against the back of her hand, he presses the head of the cane into her palm. Her skin is so, so soft.

She adjusts her grip deftly. "Thanks. You're the same guy who was here yesterday, am I right?"

"This is my...shift," Francis says, the words slow and considered.

"Hey, I wanted to apologize for Carl," she says, tapping the cane once, twice on the ground at Francis's feet. "He can get a little, well, short. Although I'm going to be the one who'll have to apologize to him."

"Why?"

The woman rolls her eyes, which is disconcerting. "Oh, he wanted to pick me up and bring me in for the sessions today. I told him I was very capable of taking the bus myself. Guess I'm eating crow."

"You got here," Francis says.

"I just haven't gotten _there_ yet."

"I'll take you." The words are out of his mouth before he can consider their many implications.

"Oh, there's no need," she says, but it sounds half-hearted. "I just have to retrace my way from the day before." She shakes her head in self-admonishment. "Shouldn't have let Peggy lead me. It's just—sometimes it's easy, you know?" She shakes her head again, this time sporting a rueful smile. "Of course you don't know."

"I know," says Francis.

She doesn't argue, only smiles. "What was it? Out the door to the left?"

"Let me take you," Francis says. "It would be...my pleasure."

"Chivalry is not dead," she says. "Thank you, Mr.—"

"Dolarhyde. But everyone calls me 'D.'"

"D. I like that. Thank you, D." She shifts the cane to her left hand and extends her right hand into the air at Francis's side. "I'm Reba."

A couple of seconds pass before he realizes he is to take her hand.

"Your hands are big," says Reba. "But then, you're tall. I can hear it, from where your voice is coming from."

Francis says nothing.

"Know what else I can hear?" Reba asks.

This makes Francis shrink back a little. Can she tell he is deformed?

"You're very kind," she says. "Shall we?"

He takes one last look back at the guard station, the coffee left steaming into empty air. Then, he says, "Mm-hm." As the woman named Peggy had, Francis takes gentle hold of Reba's hand and weaves her arm through his, letting her hand rest lightly on his forearm.

She barks an abrupt laugh, both awed and pleased. "Dear God, man. You're a tank!"

"I like to work out."

"Clearly," says Reba. "I need to do more of that myself." She pokes herself softly in the belly with the head of the cane. "Less homemade pie and more sit-ups."

 _You're perfect_ , Francis thinks. He says, "I like pie, too."

Her laugh is like sunlight. "All things in moderation. Although I never really liked that phrase. Some things you have to go overboard on. Otherwise life's just not worth it."

Francis nods, then adds, "Uh-huh," when he realizes she can't see him.

They walk out into the harsh cold of a Baltimore November.

"It's starting to smell like snow," Reba says. "Are you going to be warm enough?"

"I'm a tank," says Francis. It earns him another laugh.

They begin the long walk down the covered breezeway. Francis tries not to shiver.

"So what do you do, besides helping silly blind ladies get to their destinations?"

"I watch people." _Is that insensitive?_ "On video monitors."

"Helping keep the university safe."

"Uh-huh."

"A very necessary service. If you were back at your station, would you be able to see me?" she asks.

"Not yet."

Reba nods. Her hair is treated with a fragrant oil.

"What do you do?" Francis asks her.

"Shockingly, I work at the Academy for the Blind. I work with Peggy, which is how I found out about these studies."

"What are they?"

"The psychology department is apparently studying human panic responses. They've got a challenge with me. It's tough to panic a person who's been blind for twenty years. You expect the whole world to be pretty strange and aggressive."

 _Interesting. Fascinating_. What Francis says is, "Good." He winces.

"I'm the outlier, I guess," says Reba, continuing blithely as if she did not feel his cringe. "But of course I wouldn't be doing it if not for the three hundred dollars they give you."

"You don't make enough at the school for the blind?"

Another laugh. "Who makes enough money, anyway?"

"Not me," Francis concedes. They have reached the hallway to the Life Sciences building, which is blessedly warm. Francis dreads the walk back for the bad weather as much as for the lack of Reba's warm presence beside him. "Nearly there," he says.

"Shame," says Reba. "I was enjoying our conversation. Want to know what makes me really panic?"

"Okay."

"Not being able to see the looks on people's faces. I feel like I miss cues when I can't hear them speaking."

Francis pauses for a moment. "I'm smiling," he says.

She smiles in return. "I appreciate that. So, what makes you panic?"

Another pause. He flicks a glance up at the camera's shining eye, hoping that no one is watching on the newly clear screen. "Being looked at."

Reba bursts out laughing so violently they have to stop walking. "Well, then, you won't have that problem with me."

Francis feels his muscles tense.

"Come on, D. It's funny. You can laugh, I promise."

"The building is here," says Francis. "What room?"

"Five-oh-four. Up on the fifth floor."

"I know that one."

Only a few seconds after Francis presses the button the elevator arrives.

Reba whacks her cane hard against the sides of the doorway as it opens to judge its width. When Francis goes for the button, she says, "I got it," nimble fingers dancing over the old, worn Braille. "I never thought I'd say this," she says as the doors whisper closed, "but kids these days. They don't read anymore. I mean with their fingers. There are screen readers now and an audiobook for everything. Do you read?"

"Mm-hm."

"What was the—oh, damn. Here's my floor. Pardon my French again."

"I speak French, too," says Francis. Anything to hear her laugh again.

And she does. "Thanks again, D. I can find my way from here."

"You're welcome," he says.

Until he had clocked out and gotten into his van, Francis had paid no attention to his growing hunger. It had, of course, been replaced by hunger of a different sort. And for once, he is gratified, because he is thinking about soft hands, light touches on his skin, palpable even through the scratchy uniform. A voice, laughter. A smell.

These are, conversely, the only things that Reba knows about Francis. He took great care not to pronounce too many 's' sounds, so she wouldn't hear the difficulty he has with them, but he had forgotten himself once or twice in his excitement. She did not remark on it. The conversation was easy, fluid. He had heard that the remaining senses sharpen when one of them is lost. Perhaps she doesn't care. Perhaps she, like he, is grateful for the attention. Both of them are damaged.

But she is so, so beautiful. No, she must get a lot of attention. And unable to tell when men look at her—and women, too, certainly. Francis knows all at once that Carl is attracted to her. Carl is not a handsome man. He has a mustache and thinning hair, a paunch. And he is rude.

Rudeness is an unattractive trait; that was something that Hannibal had said when Francis had described the woman at the deli. Hannibal is a handsome man, sitting with ease in his impeccable form, his fine clothes.

During the session, Francis had, of course, been careful not to allude to his fantasy. It had not been the same woman from the deli, but a transcendent version. The Platonic ideal. Safe from him. His alone.

Of course, he has to share Reba with the rest of the world. Has to share the sight of her, and one day he will not see her anymore. The psychology department will end its trials and she will leave him. But, in a way, sharing her and even losing her protects her from the dark things that sometimes prod at his images of her. Not too hard, not too insistent. Her light is far too strong.

 _Reba_. The name feels good in his mouth.

Even without enough fuel in his body, Francis is able to push himself hard while lifting this morning. _Dear God, man. You're a tank._ It makes him smile—a real smile—one where he can feel the heavy tissue of the scar curling under, the slight lift of his nose. He hopes he isn't too hideous.

Lying in bed, dreaming, Reba is waiting for him. It is definitely her face on the woman in the orange gown. The color illuminates her. She has her eyes closed but is still stretching her arms out toward Francis, and he hesitates for a moment, wanting to draw out the seconds between his looking at her and the time that she dissipates into smoke in his embrace. Impelled by need, though, he does eventually go to her. This time she is warm and solid, smelling of hair oil and the spicy perfume of the lilies before they began wilting.

It discomfits him a little. _The orange lily signifies hatred or revenge._

But Reba's arms are around him, her face upturned toward his though her eyes are still closed. She doesn't need them.

 _Thank you, D_ , she says.

The earthquake comes in a great percussive slap. Francis, stumbling, holds tight to Reba, who goes limp against him. The next temblor finds them both in the clearing, where the dragon-mountain is unfurling its wings. The snub-nosed head snakes out from behind the parting leathery curtains. Its scales glint red in the weak moonlight. As the wings part further, Francis sees that the dragon has not reptile's claws but human hands tipped in thick, black nails.

He gathers Reba in his arms and clutches her to his wide chest.

The dragon reaches one of its hands toward them, palm up, beckoning. _Don't forget_ , it says, and its voice vibrates Francis's bones.

Reba opens her eyes. They are not brown but milk-white and blank. _Don't let it get me, D_ , she whispers.

 _I won't_ , he tells her, but this seems to enrage the dragon.

It whips its wing back, revealing its entire hunched form perched on the stunted plateau that serves as the base of its mountain. The air flees Francis's lungs and he is drawn forward, running in the wake of the huge gust the dragon has created, nearly lifted off his feet.

He feels it in the air before it happens: the swoop of the wing. It roars through the displaced air, this time scooping Francis up and hurling him toward the starless sky. He clutches Reba.

Just as they begin to fall he wakes with a gasp.

His hand is immediately under the covers, pawing at his groin beneath his sleep pants. No, he is flaccid. Francis sighs, relieved.

He has nearly canceled his appointment with Hannibal, as tonight is his night off work, but his desire to talk about the dream overrides the inconvenience of driving into the city.

Even though the day is so bright that Francis has to wear sunglasses while driving, Hannibal welcomes him into an office that is as dark and quiet as ever. He has pulled the heavy drapes, and the upper library level is lost in darkness, making it appear as if a moonless sky hangs over them.

The only illumination comes from a tortoiseshell lamp on the desk behind which Hannibal sits when Francis enters. He stands, the sharp shadows fleeing his sharp face and then returning as he walks to the door to meet Francis.

"Welcome," says Hannibal.

"Thank you."

"You are, as always, unfailingly polite."

"Rudeness is an unattractive trait."

Hannibal inclines his head slightly. "Indeed. Has someone been rude to you lately, Francis?"

At first he shakes his head, but then reverses course and nods. "A man. Named Carl."

Hannibal beckons Francis toward the chairs. "What did he do to you?" he asks as they settle themselves in their accustomed configuration.

"He was just rude."

"On account of your face, like the woman at the sandwich shop?"

"No." He pauses, steeling himself for the word. "Brusque. And rude to the people he was with."

"How did that make you feel?"

"Angry," says Francis.

"Do you get angry often?"

He shakes his head, but it is tentative enough that he can see Hannibal notices it.

"Did you want to hurt this man? Carl?" Hannibal asks.

"No!" He stops a moment, then says, "Why do you think I would?"

"I don't, necessarily," says Hannibal. "Despite our sessions together, I feel I do not know you very well at all, Francis. Nevertheless, it is not outside of the bounds of normal human experience to wish harm on others when they wrong us. Even to fantasize about revenge, or justice."

"I know." Francis also knows he is being defensive, and knows that Hannibal sees it.

"Your lily has not yet bloomed," says Hannibal, leaving the statement open-ended. "Prior to this man, Carl, when was the last time you were angry?"

 _Andy_. "I don't remember."

"Very well, then. What makes you angry? In the abstract, of course. Indulge me."

 _What makes you panic?_

"Being looked at," Francis answers.

"No," says Hannibal. "Not just being looked at. _How_ do they look at you?"

"Like I'm not there."

" _No_ ," Hannibal reiterates sharply, making Francis flinch. "That would be preferable. You are there, Francis. You are present in your skin, such as it is. For them to see, and to judge. Tell me how they judge you."

Francis turns his head away, trying not to show that he is blinking back tears. "With...disgust."

"And?"

"And...pity."

"Ah." Hannibal sits back in his chair. "That hurts most, doesn't it?"

Francis nods.

"Did you expect _me_ to pity you at all?" asks Hannibal

"Yes."

"And do I?"

"No."

"Who was the last person who showed you this pity you despise?"

Francis chews his lip. "The woman. In the deli." He wants to reach out, to placate Hannibal without giving himself away. "I thought—I thought...about hurting her."

Hannibal indulges him with a smile that makes Francis's spine go weak with relief. "What did you do to the woman? In this fantasy?"

Francis looks down at his feet. "Cut her."

"How?"

"With a knife."

"Good. Where?"

Francis looks up, puzzled to see a flash of mirth in Hannibal's eyes that disappears just as quickly as it came. He traces the scar on his lip with his forefinger. "Here," he says.

"To force empathy," Hannibal says.

Nodding, Francis feels the panic of the last couple of seconds abating.

"Understandable," says Hannibal, his clinical demeanor returned.

Once again, Francis fields a wave of formless disappointment.

"There is one thing I do want to know, however," Hannibal begins. "The way you had described it, this woman did not pity you. She was disgusted by you. In your litany, Francis, which is the greater sin?"

It feels as though a hand has seized Francis's heart. "Pity," he chokes out.

"Would you have hurt her more in your mind if she had pitied you?"

"I did!" Francis nearly shouts. "I did hurt her more. Inside my head."

"Did it make you feel good?"

Tears are slipping free now. "Yes."

"Who was the last person who pitied you?" Hannibal asks, leaning forward, softer now.

Francis draws in a long, shuddering breath. "Andy."

"It must have felt good, seeing him harmed, when you wished that upon him. As if your anger had reached out and hurt him of its own accord."

"It did." Barely more audible than a mumble.

"Say again."

"It did!"

"Tell me how."

"I—I pushed him. He didn't just fall. I pushed him."

"The accident."

Francis nods, wiping at his eyes. "I didn't mean for him to get hurt."

"But your anger did," says Hannibal. "It wanted Andy to hurt for his misplaced pity, yes?"

Francis nods.

"That anger is part of you, but it's only one part. If Andy had been able to see your full self, instead of simply the exterior, he would have had no reason for pity. He would have cause for respect."

Another nod. Francis is breathing hard.

"Possibly even fear," Hannibal says. "Do you agree?"

"I'm sick," says Francis. "I think about sick things."

"You are rejecting a part of your inherent makeup, Francis. In our godless universe, what have we determined is the highest virtue?"

"Being true."

"Truth to self. Indeed. As of now you are allowing others to dictate what that self is from outside it. Can you not be kind? Can you not be just?"

He thinks of Reba, her soft hand on his arm. "Yes."

"We mustn't force ourselves on others, but we must enforce ourselves as fact," says Hannibal. "Andy has seen more of you than most. He'll keep quiet about it, though." There, again—another flicker of amusement.

Francis nods, sniffles. "Are you going to turn me in?"

Hannibal sits back. "No. Not now that I've seen you, as well."

"Respect?" Francis asks.

"Yes. For your forthrightness and honesty, among other things. The patient-therapist relationship must be one based on mutual respect. And trust. Do you trust me, Francis?"

"Yes," he says. "I do."

Juddering with residual energy from the appointment, Francis tries to exercise when he returns from the city, but can't concentrate. He decides to lie down instead. When he closes his eyes he can smell Reba's hair, feel her skin. Nonetheless, he groans when he feels the first stirrings of his cock.

 _Please don't make me take her apart. Please._

Francis is pleased, then, that he thinks about her laugh, her smile, her unseeing eyes as he hardens in his hand. Would she be revolted if he let her touch his face, know him from the outside as well as in?

He wants to know her from the inside. No, not her red beating heart and slick organs. He _wants_ her. Wants to taste her skin, perhaps even to kiss her.

He places his lips close to hers. But the Francis in his mind now has Grandmother's teeth, which are gnashing despite his pleas.

 _Don't let it get me, D._

"No," he whispers, and squeezes the base of his cock with a cruel grip. "Hannibal. Help me."

And Reba is gone, her scent replaced by a darker, more complex aroma. Francis recognizes it at once as Hannibal's cologne. And somehow it makes him painfully hard, desperate for release.

 _What is God in godlessness?_ Hannibal whispers by Francis's cheek, lips brushing his ear.

Like a great bellows, the dragon takes a breath.

 _Good_ , Hannibal says, and then Francis is coming—hard, endless.


	4. Canto IV: The Gluttonous (Hannibal)

Samy Prashad's leaking eyes are rolling in his head. He cannot speak around the flexible plastic tube in his throat, but he is terrified. Hannibal notes this, then turns his back once again to continue preparing the slurry of Potomac River silt he stirs with brisk, economical motion in one of his good ceramic mixing bowls.

The councilman must be in pain at this point, pinned as he is in one of Hannibal's dining chairs. Much to his distaste, Hannibal has had to use duct tape to secure Prashad's head in the awkward position he requires for his work. It is inelegant, but even he knows elegance must occasionally be sacrificed for practicality. At the very least he's taken the precaution of wrapping the fine oak in cloth before securing Prashad's head.

The bound man emits a gurgle. Tracheal intubation confers a pain all its own.

"I'm afraid I can't understand you," Hannibal says, rolling up his shirtsleeves. "To be quite honest, I never could, even when you had full control of your vocal instrument."

A strained wheeze barrels up from Prashad's lungs, amplified by the tube.

"Tut, tut, Mr. Councilman," says Hannibal. "Tuneless at best. Though I do appreciate your attempt at singing for your supper."

Another wheeze, this one more urgent.

Hannibal places the bowl aside and steps into his plastic coverall. The bodily instinct of one who is aspirating liquids is to cough them out. It can be quite the display. With the suit zipped to his chin and a plastic face shield lowered, Hannibal sets the neck of a funnel inside the end of the tube. Tucking the bowl in the crook of his arm, he gives the contents another quick whisk to loosen any settled sediment.

"Bon appétit," he says, and begins to pour.

Though the steps of City Hall would have made for excellent showmanship, visibility is far too high. Hannibal must content himself with leaving Prashad's mud-spattered corpse propped against a bronze construction in the Baltimore Museum of Art's sculpture garden. Marino Marini's 1954 piece entitled The Miracle.

He settles the body along the sleek line of the sculpture's equine lower half, mimicking the pose of the human figure seated above it. The mad grin on the bronze figure's face is a good match to Prashad's death rictus. If the medical examiner is very astute, he or she will find the small scroll inside the councilman's mud-clotted lungs. It is, of course, a clipping of the opening bars of Bartók's String Quartet No. 5, which had been playing at the symphony fundraiser underneath Hannibal's conversation with Prashad.

A forensic pathologist will not have to be nearly so observant to see that both of Prashad's calves have been excised down to the bone.

After having cleaned his staging area in the garage—next to the Bentley but not close enough to have it spattered with river mud—and disposing of the sullied tarp, Hannibal takes the two portions from Prashad's body from the refrigerator. Together they will yield fairly little, but it will be adequate for his purposes. He peels away the hairy flesh and leaves the meat in cheesecloth to drip over the industrial sink while he mixes the herbs and spices. Bavarian weisswurst veal sausage is made with lemon zest, finely diced onions, chopped Italian parsley. Hannibal eschews the pork shoulder entirely, preferring to leave the taste undiluted. Using muscles already somewhat strained from the hauling of Prashad's body, he removes his meat grinder and sausage stuffer from the walk-in refrigerator. The metal must be chilled for best results.

After grinding and mixing the meat and seasoning, he pan-fries a small patty to get an idea of the taste, finding it acceptable. The two-inch links will age in Hannibal's Stagionello EVO curing cabinet. He has tentative plans for their use.

On the morning that news of the discovery of Prashad's body breaks, Hannibal is partaking of good, strong coffee—a heavy and earthy Sumatra with an espresso-like froth of crema—and watching the news outlets' online publications stumble over themselves to crack some new angle. Of course there are no particulars of interest. The manner of death won't be evident until the autopsy. They may at first assume Prashad succumbed to acute alcohol poisoning at the base of the statue, but this does not please Hannibal. Not yet. Only later will the poetic nature of the justice he has meted out emerge.

In the shower, as he lathers his body with Agraria Golden Cassis soap, Hannibal indulges the loose-limbed satiation of having lately acted according to his nature. It is akin to but surpasses sexual release. He had not needed to watch the light leave Samy Prashad's eyes—that is a clichéd indulgence for lesser men. The pleasure had come in the inevitability, the putting in motion of an act that only had one outcome. Hannibal is distinctly unused to unanticipated outcomes.

Today, he has two appointments: one with Bedelia and the other with Francis. He is pleased at the prospect of such momentum, the particulars of the translation from one mode to the next.

With a full schedule for the afternoon, he'll need to take lunch in his office. Ensconced in a silk bathrobe, he leaves the master bath and goes downstairs to the kitchen, first checking on the curing cabinet before going to the heavy stainless steel refrigerator. Inside is a packet of fresh bluefin tuna, which he carefully slices and layers over sticky rice, all to be placed inside an insulated bento box.

Hannibal dresses as he usually does, choosing a wool glen plaid suit appropriate to the weather. Pattering against his bedroom window is a slushy rain that has tried and failed as of yet to turn to snow.

Declining until later to snug his fur-lined cap over his head, he walks out to the heated garage where the Bentley waits. It is time to have it cleaned again.

But not today.

When she opens the door, he sees Bedelia is dressed in a cashmere turtleneck sweater in a deep green hue, paired with a calf-length camel hair skirt. Her knee-high boots have been recently polished. Hannibal would expect no less. Theirs is a courtly, choreographed relationship.

"Good morning," he says, nodding once briefly in her direction.

"Good morning, Hannibal."

The heated air of the house billows across his face and he steps into it, leaving the mess of the streets behind a mahogany door.

"Would you like coffee?" Bedelia asks.

"I shouldn't. Do you have tea?"

Bedelia, in turn, inclines her head and about-faces toward the kitchen to prepare it.

Hannibal takes her accustomed seat once again. He is enjoying this little game.

Of course, she makes no mention of it when she returns to place the inlaid tray, on which is perched a bone china tea set, onto the side table.

Hannibal looks at his cup as she pours but does not take up the saucer. Not yet.

"Last session we spoke about change," Bedelia says.

"Is change not to be had from session to session?" he asks, favoring her with a slim smile.

"Don't be snide, Hannibal. It doesn't become you."

"And so you bring the conversation around again."

"How so?" she asks, no doubt knowing exactly to what he is referring.

"Becoming," Hannibal answers. "Maturation. Emergence."

"I don't suppose we're speaking about our professional relationship anymore."

"Professional?" he asks. "Perhaps not."

"You and I don't have a personal relationship," Bedelia says.

Hannibal nods, slowly. "I only meant to differentiate between our interaction as colleagues and our interaction as patient and therapist."

"As we don't interact outside of this setting, I can't make any judgments on the former. In what way do you feel as though you're emerging?"

"A clumsy redirection, Dr. DuMaurier."

"No." She shakes her head, but it isn't a denial of his statement. "You continue to obfuscate. You know someone who is undergoing a change. A patient of yours, then?"

Hannibal nods.

"From what state is he or she emerging?" Bedelia asks.

"He is being devoured," says Hannibal, finally taking up the teacup and saucer.

Bedelia gives him a sharp look. "You aim to save him from the maw of the beast?"

"Or to allow him to enter the beast and become it."

She furrows her brow. "The only alternative to being devoured is to devour? That's rather uninventive, Hannibal."

"He is engaged in himself so that it must be one or the other, no less and no more," he says.

A cold smile. "And yet you admit there could, indeed, be more."

"In some universe, yes," he says. "But this is not that world."

"Predetermination of treatment course is poor form," Bedelia counters. "You know that, but you choose to ignore it."

"What is your determination of the course of my treatment thus far?" Hannibal asks.

Bedelia pauses to take a long, considered breath. She levels her gaze at him over the rim of the teacup. "I would say your treatment is less of a course and more of a point."

This satisfies Hannibal. "We sit here, suspended in this moment, discussing change while changeless."

Setting the empty teacup down on the side table, Bedelia dabs at her berry-colored lips with a linen napkin. "One could argue that there is little point in continuing treatment when there is no foreseeable arc."

Hannibal raises an eyebrow. "You would prefer to discontinue your sessions with me?"

"I want to discontinue the sessions with the person you wear, Hannibal. Not with you."

"And what will you be wearing when you see what's underneath?"

To this, Bedelia has no ready answer.

Were it possible for Hannibal to feel anything other than centered in himself at other times, he would feel re-grounded after departing Bedelia's home. Sleet spatters the Bentley's windshield. The heavy and wet sound puts him in mind of Samy Prashad's clotted coughing as his lungs filled with muck. That would have been toward the beginning of the procedure, of course. The councilman had begun to aspirate the mixture quickly; Hannibal had only to step back and clean his gloved hands with a cloth as the chair shuddered and rocked along with Prashad's death throes. Only once had he feared that it might tip over and undo some of his work, but by that time petechiae had begun to bloom in Prashad's eyes and conjunctivae, and Hannibal had been able to turn his back with confidence and let the operation have its course.

The sclera of the councilman's eyes had been suffused with bright blood by the time his brain ceased its functioning, only a few attenuated moments after the cardiac arrest that shut his body down. Upon opening the bento box at his desk, Hannibal is pleased to note that the bluefin sashimi has retained a similarly insistent red color. With the initial quavering notes of the Pie Jesu from Fauré's Requiem twining through the dust motes within the empty office, Hannibal places thin slices of pure wasabi root underneath each tender slice of fish. The cut of the tuna is akami—lean—and the texture is buttery.

He eats, and as he does he contemplates the act, wondering absently if he should not have removed the councilman's calves prior to slaughter. Of course, his adrenaline would be high in any instance. Hannibal has rarely has the opportunity to taste meat untainted by fear, as the unplanned often proves an offense to his aesthetic. One notable exception had been the case of a census worker who had been insistent to the point of personal infringement. Hannibal had invited him in and given him a seat on the plush settee and a cup of hot licorice root infusion before cutting his throat. It had quite ruined the carpet, but the man's liver had proven firm and flavorful, and the gravy divine.

He pours cool, unfiltered Sugata Junmai Ginjō into a small earthenware cup and drains it. The office will smell vaguely of spice and sea as he welcomes Francis Dolarhyde into its hushed interior, and this pleases him.

Francis himself nearly always smells of trepidation, which masks a scent of clean maleness. He does not wear fragrance, nor has he for a long time. His breath indicates rigorous dental care, especially impressive owing to the appliance. What peculiar torment a dentist's visit must be, with the unavoidable focal point his interrupted mouth. It must be akin to the feeling of being here, exposed to this prodding. The notion arouses Hannibal; he acknowledges it before he lets it pass.

He decides at that moment that he would like to watch Francis eating.

At precisely one o'clock, a small LED light on Hannibal's desk illuminates, signaling that the intercom has been activated. The man he greets at the door is pale, with leaping eyes like a prey animal.

Francis accepts the offer of tea this time. The delicate cup appears laughably small in his huge hands.

"Last time, I believe we made some significant progress in your treatment," Hannibal begins.

Francis says nothing. He does not drink the tea, only holds it like a protective shield at the level of his heart.

"You were able to admit to me some uncomfortable truths about the situation with your co-worker."

Still, Francis is silent.

"Have you thought about it more since we last spoke?"

Finally, Hannibal wins acknowledgement in a meek nod.

"What do you feel?" he asks.

"Relief," says Francis.

"Very good." He takes a sip of his own tea. "I'd like to know if Andy said something to you to make you react as you did. Was it sudden? Or an accumulation of slights?"

Francis's brows draw inward, bringing forth a horizontal crease over his aquiline nose. "He...wanted me to come to his house. For Thanksgiving."

"He assumed you would have no one with whom to spend the holiday."

"No. I—I told him I didn't have any family."

"Had he made any similar approaches previously? A drink after work?"

"No," Francis says. "We didn't really talk."

"This was the first time that he was moved enough by pity to approach you," Hannibal states. "And, correspondingly, the first time you were moved enough by anger to strike out. You were each other's catalysts."

"He didn't push me," says Francis.

"Oh, but he did."

"I don't think he meant to hurt me."

"No," says Hannibal, "nor did you enter into the confrontation intending to hurt him."

Francis sighs. "No."

Hannibal favors him with a soft smile. "The medieval ethicist Peter Abelard would say you were absolved of any guilt."

The line between Francis's eyebrows deepens.

"Abelard argues that one's intention and not the deed itself determines the moral value of an action," says Hannibal. "For instance, if a slave who has been beaten and abused were to murder his master by poisoning him in the night, the slave would be at fault, for his intent was to kill. However, if the master has declared he will kill the slave and the slave strikes out, accidentally killing his master instead, he bears no guilt because his only intention was to protect himself from death."

"I was only...protecting myself," Francis says.

"Indeed."

"But," he takes a breath, "it felt good."

"Of course it did. Abelard addressed this, too. The fact of the deed does affect our emotional reaction to it. Suppose, Abelard writes, that a monk is bound against his will to a bed, attended by two women. If his body is brought to pleasure yet still the mind does not consent, he is clean of the deed's stain on his morality and cannot be blamed by God or man. There is no shame or condemnation in acting according to your nature, Francis."

"I don't know what my nature is."

"That's a part of why you're with me," Hannibal says. "Remember, our time together is a journey, not a fixed moment in space. You will not always feel the way you do."

"I feel safe. Here."

"I'm glad." Placing his teacup aside and intertwining his fingers, Hannibal sits back against the soft leather of his chair. "I'd like to propose an experiment, then. If and when you are comfortable, I would like you to come to my home for dinner."

Francis shrinks back. "With your family?"

Hannibal shakes his head. "I, like you, am very much alone in the world. It would merely be two fellow travelers sharing a meal. And quite a good one. I promise."

"You cook?"

"I have great affection for the arts, with the culinary being no exception."

"I think I'd like to," Francis says quietly.

"Excellent," says Hannibal. "On what evening are you next free?"

Francis sets down his untouched teacup and props his chin up with one hand. "Thursday."

"Two nights from now, then. I'll give you my address. I would ask you to please be prompt, but I know I need not worry."

Francis nods. There is reluctance there, confusion, but also curiosity. Hannibal observes it and is satisfied.

The following day, he has secured an appointment for a private viewing of the Blake sketch at Dimmond and Wellesley. Once authenticity was verified to the greatest degree possible, Dimmond had called him at once, inviting him to an after-hours assessment of the piece.

Now Dimmond ushers Hannibal into his spare gallery with obvious bedroom eyes, half-lidded and paired with what he no doubt supposes is a teasing smile. Hannibal pushes down a flash of annoyance.

"I would say, 'Welcome,' but I know you've been here before."

"Never in such pleasant company," Hannibal says. The forward gallery, though it may seem impressive to the dilettante, holds comparatively worthless works. Hannibal knows that the true masterpieces are kept in the back vault, which is where Dimmond leads him. He stops at the glass door that leads to the vault room and taps at a keypad, presumably to disable a motion sensing system. Hannibal has such a system in his home.

"The vault is on a delay, so we'll have to wait a bit," Dimmond says. He presses his thumb to the biometrics reader and punches a complex code on the touch screen below.

Hannibal, more for his amusement than anything else, makes a note of each digit of the code and files it away in an accessible portion of his memory palace.

"Fifteen minutes," Dimmond says. "Whatever shall we do?"

He had expected the clumsy come-on since stepping over the threshold. "Shall we examine some of the works you keep in the lobby?"

Dimmond shakes his head with exaggerated disapproval.

Hannibal anticipates that he will try to kiss him, press his scented body against him again. Instead, Dimmond goes straight for the calf hide belt of Hannibal's trousers.

He bites his lip, projecting coquettishness as he sinks to his knees. "I don't believe I had the privilege of doing this during our last encounter."

"I see why your invitation specified I visit after business hours," says Hannibal. Despite his impatience, he relents a little and strokes Dimmond's hair as Dimmond lowers his zipper.

"I wonder," Dimmond says, "do you taste as good as you smell?" By this time he has freed Hannibal's cock, which responds to his touches.

Half hard, Hannibal allows himself to luxuriate in the sensation of slipping into Dimmond's warm mouth. The man is practiced, at least. With a hand on Hannibal's buttock, Dimmond encourages him to move his hips in small and measured thrusts. One of the internal locking mechanisms of the vault springs to life.

Dimmond hums around his cock.

Hannibal runs his long fingers through Dimmond's salt-and-pepper hair, delivering comforting strokes before intentionally pushing a little too far forward, causing Dimmond to gag. He reacts only slightly, flinching back, then returns.

"Good," Hannibal whispers, a nearly imperceptible smile curling his lips.

An eager Dimmond is now actively encouraging Hannibal to thrust to the back of his throat. His eyes are leaking slightly. Hannibal is put in mind of Samy Prashad, his wide and panicked eyes spilling tears, and suddenly he is very close to the edge, painfully hard.

"Soon," he says to Dimmond. He would never fail to do a partner the courtesy of forewarning him.

"Mm-hm."

When Dimmond encircles Hannibal's cock with two fingers, Hannibal grits his teeth and comes, exhaling hard through his nose. His breath ruffles Dimmond's hair as Dimmond swallows smoothly.

He sits back on his heels, swiping at the corners of his mouth with his thumb. Another click of the lock. "Oh, yes you do," he says, looking up at Hannibal with shining eyes.

"How much time do we have?" Hannibal asks, once again suppressing his impatience.

"Time enough," says Dimmond, who unbuttons his own trousers.

Hannibal lends him a handkerchief of frankly sub-par linen. Dimmond remains on his knees as he brings himself off while Hannibal watches.

The keypad lights up green.

"Perfect," says Dimmond, rising at last to his feet. He huffs a breath with the effort of hauling the heavy door open. Humidity-controlled air rushes out and Hannibal and Dimmond step inside.

The vault contains stacks of shallow drawers. It is one on the far right-hand side at the corner that Dimmond pulls open, gesturing with a histrionic flourish at its contents. There, rendered in charcoal, are the familiar lines of The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed in Sun. Here, in such sharp relief, unfiltered by the softness of watercolor, the woman's wide-eyed fear is apparent. The Dragon's wings spread over her like a canopy, a chuppah for their implied coupling.

"Exquisite," Hannibal says. "Do you have a loupe?"

Dimmond nods and turns to take the magnifying device from a shelf on the wall nearest the door.

Hannibal fits it into his eye and inspects the linework, the residue of the pencil that moves over the minuscule imperfections in the fine paper. "And it has been confirmed genuine?"

"The dating corresponds, and we've flown in three experts including a historian and a restorationist to confirm a match to Blake's style and his other sketches."

"It is quite as complete as you said. Will it go to auction?"

"That depends," Dimmond says.

"On?"

"The possible intervention of a private buyer."

Hannibal nods. "I'll need it museum-quality framed. As soon as possible."

Dimmond grins. "We won't need to ship it out. Our preservation expert has just returned from a trip to Istanbul."

"Could you by any chance have it ready by tomorrow?"

"I'll call in the preservationist. If you'll be so good as to choose your preferred aesthetic, he can have it mounted as early as tomorrow afternoon."

"Excellent," Hannibal says. "I'll arrange the transfer of funds."

True to his word, Dimmond has the Blake sketch prepared by midafternoon Thursday. The frame is gold leaf, the acid-free matting subtle. Hannibal oversees the delivery to his home, ensuring that it is properly crated and handled. He does, however, hang it himself, preferring the singular satisfaction of creating wounds even in plaster. It replaces a lesser landscape by Constable on the dining room wall.

Hannibal is eager to have Francis see it and remark on it, so he puts the fine Haviland Limoges place setting where he will be seated directly across from the sketch.

Dimmond calls as Hannibal prepares to begin his cooking that evening, under the pretense of inquiring about the piece. "I wonder if you wouldn't join me tonight," Dimmond says. "I hope you won't think I'm too forward, but I took the liberty of getting us reservations at Charleston."

"I wish I could, but I'm having a friend for dinner," Hannibal says, awaiting the palpable disappointment in Dimmond's voice with a certain gratification.

"Understandable. I should know better than to make last-minute plans, but I couldn't help myself. Maybe I'll manage to drag Gene out tonight. He's a bit of a shut-in, but we have cause to celebrate."

"A lucrative sale," Hannibal says.

"Makes it sound so petty, but yes," Dimmond says. "I was hoping to celebrate with our buyer."

"I have no doubt I'll be cooking for you in the very near future."

"I look forward to that. Have a good evening."

"And you do the same, Anthony."

Hannibal puts his phone on silent and washes his hands with a rough block of goat's milk soap studded with lavender blossoms. A ball of dough sits fermenting in a tightly closed plastic bag on the butcher's block, and Hannibal now unwraps it and rolls it in fresh, unbleached flour. The Bauernbrot, or German sourdough, goes roughly formed on an alder wood plank and into the stone oven.

He pan-toasts whole mustard and coriander seeds then grinds them together with mortar and pestle into a fine powder, which will be combined with vinegar and a touch of maple syrup. The calf-meat sausages have not aged adequately even in the state-of-the-art curing cabinet, but cooking them has been part of his plan since Francis had agreed to come to dinner.

They are cool but still soft to the touch when he removes them. He sets a cast copper stew pot to boil. As per Bavarian tradition, the sausages will be tipped into the hot water just after the pot has been removed from the burner and left to warm for only ten minutes before being served.

He has only begun to simmer the onions and red cabbage for the confit when he hears the doorbell.

Francis, punctual as always. Hannibal expects wide-eyed wonderment when he opens the door, and he is not disappointed.

"Please," he says. "Come in."

Francis is wearing dark slacks and a collared shirt. No dinner jacket or tie, not that Hannibal had expected one. He had given precious few instructions, preferring to allow the probabilities for the night to aggregate before scattering like billiard balls with the fact of Francis's presence.

"I didn't know what to bring," Francis says, taking in the well appointed entry hall but pointedly avoiding any glances toward the pewter-framed mirror that hangs there.

"Nothing but yourself," Hannibal says. "I would give you a tour of the house, but I'm afraid that will have to wait until later in the evening. It will be the dining room for now, and you'll have to forgive my absence for a little. I'd invite you into the kitchen but a good chef never reveals his secrets."

Francis nods and follows Hannibal through the entryway down a short hall leading to the dining room. "It smells wonderful," he says.

"There is much more to come," Hannibal tells him, smiling. The only light in the dining room comes from the flickering candelabra at the center of the table, augmented only slightly by the weak glow of the wall sconces that flank the Blake sketch. He is pleased to see that Francis's attention is drawn to it at once.

Savoring, he lets the anticipation hang in the air and instead guides Francis to his seat. "You did tell me you drink wine, yes?"

"Mm-hm."

Hannibal steps away and removes a bottle from an insulated chiller on a cast iron stand in the corner of the room. He neatly cuts the foil and opens the bottle with a compact corkscrew, then takes up one of the Riedel Vinum glasses and tips a bit of the shining golden liquid into its bowl. The stemware frosts over where the wine touches it. Hannibal gives the glass to Francis.

"This is a 1997 Nierstein Hipping Riesling Grand Cru from the Rheinhessen," he says, inclining his head. "Be my guest."

Francis takes the glass, places it under his nose, and inhales. Something in the way he does it seems familiar, practiced. After a moment's hesitation, he raises the glass to his lips, but holds it askew on his mouth, favoring the undamaged side.

Hannibal is charmed.

"It's very good," Francis says. "Dry."

At that, Hannibal takes the glass from him once again and fills it halfway. "Indulge," he says. "I insist." He goes once again into the kitchen, where the rich and sweet scent of the simmering confit is pressing against the borders of the room. His pot of water is boiling.

He leaves Francis alone in the dining room for the full twenty minutes it takes for the remainder of the preparation and plating, and is pleased to find him studying the sketch, wine in hand. His shoulders jump slightly with his flinch as Hannibal speaks.

"I'll tell you more about that piece later. For now, it's time to eat."

Nodding, Francis takes his seat.

"Bavarian weisswurst veal sausage over red cabbage confit and maple coriander mustard," Hannibal says, setting the Limoges plate down.

Francis's hands are in his lap, underneath the table.

"You'll need this," Hannibal says, sweeping a napkin from the tabletop and draping it over Francis's thighs before he can protest. The yeasty smell of the Bauernbrot has begun to winnow out from beneath the cloth he has draped over the basket. "Weisswurst is traditionally eaten not with knife and fork but with fingers. One sucks the meat whole from its casing. Shall I demonstrate?"

Francis's eyes go a little wider, though Hannibal can tell he is trying to contain his discomfort.

Hannibal pours himself some of the Riesling and sits, then takes one of the small links between thumb and forefinger and raises it to his lips.

"Guten appetit," he says.

The spectacle of the meal had been everything Hannibal had expected: a flickering tableau of fumbling and assurance at every stage. What he had retained of Samy Prashad had been satisfactorily elevated to an aesthetic level the councilman himself would have decried had his copious breath not been stopped up.

Francis had known he was the subject of a performance and had nonetheless been eager to perform well. The flexing of his arm as he lifted the portions of sausage from the plate, the pointed avoidance of the damaged left-hand portion of his mouth—it all made for an appealing asymmetrical composition with its focal point being the scar.

After watching Francis pat his grease-shined lips with the napkin, Hannibal stands, wine glass in hand. "Shall we have a tour?"

"What is that? That drawing?" Francis asks. He rises to join Hannibal.

"That is a study for William Blake's The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed in Sun."

"Red dragon?"

"Part of the Revelation mythos. Do you know the Bible well, Francis?"

His face goes hard. "Some parts."

Ah. The grandmother.

"Come to the sitting room," Hannibal says. "I'll show you the painting."

"You own it?"

"No. As a work it is quite beyond price. But I'd like you to see what it looks like."

They enter the sitting room, the painted wooden harpsichord a dark bulk in the corner. Hannibal retrieves his iPad from a roll-top desk, fingers tapping at the screen before he hands the tablet over to Francis, who studies the image for a long while. "There are three other paintings in the series, allowing us to gradually see the seven faces of the dragon." He scrolls through the three remaining images, ensuring that Francis has time to study them, from the back view of the dragon's spread wings to his spread legs in the frankly sexual The Great Red Dragon and the Beast From the Sea.

"He looks like a man," Francis says.

"And by Blake's reckoning in some aspects a beautiful man. Powerful and dominant. But, then, Lucifer was said to have been the most beautiful of the angels before his fall in the war of Heaven."

"The dragon is the Devil?" Francis asks. There is a note of despair in the query.

Hannibal smiles, indulgent. "In the raving imaginings of an exile, at least."

"Who is the woman?"

"I'd rather have you read Revelation, if you'd be willing."

"I don't really like the Bible." Francis's face is going opaque, unreadable.

"I understand," Hannibal says. "By all accounts it is full of terrible things. But this portion is peculiarly reminiscent of your dreams in many respects. I wonder if you may find answers of a sort, or at the very least correspondence to your singular aesthetic." He stands and pulls a leather-bound, gold-embossed copy of the King James Bible from a shelf and extends it toward Francis.

"I have one."

"Take this one," says Hannibal.

"It's too beautiful. I couldn't."

Hannibal sets the book on the side table that sits between the two chairs. "Many things are beautiful on the outside and terrible on the inside. By 'terrible' I do not merely mean inspiring horror, but also inspiring awe. Respect."

"Like the Red Dragon."

"But God's face is far more terrible to behold than that of the Devil. A mortal may look on the face of the Adversary but not on the face of God without going mad. One can't even look Him in the eyes, such as they may be, as He kills you. Wouldn't you rather see the face of the thing that brings about your end?"

Francis nods, though it is underlain by uncertainty.

"Even when that thing is beautiful. Or terrible to behold but made beautiful by devotion. Do you think you are deserving of beautiful things, Francis?"

"No."

Hannibal sniffs. "None of us are. What beauty we find we must take." He kneels before the chair Francis sits in—settled on both knees like a penitent. He very much tries to look the part with head bowed and eyes averted. This, of course, is intentional.

Francis sits hunched, thighs pushed tight together. Still, they part with relative ease when Hannibal applies a little pressure.

"Hannibal." His voice is only just louder than a whisper. "What are you doing?"

"And they worshipped the dragon which gave power to the beast. And they worshipped the beast, saying, 'Who is like unto the beast?'"

"Revelation?" Francis asks.

"In many senses, I hope." Hannibal leans in, his nose bare millimeters from the juncture of Francis's legs, and inhales deeply of the dark, earthy scent there. With firm hands on the inside of Francis's thighs, Hannibal pushes his legs further apart. He can hear the strain of the fabric, can see the trousers' seam pressing a tight line between Francis's testicles. When he runs his tongue up that seam, Francis shivers.

"Please," he says. "Don't." And yet his hips rise involuntarily as Hannibal draws manicured fingers along his thighs. His cock twitches under Hannibal's lips.

Hannibal smells arousal now, strong and sharp, and he is pleased. "And I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seals, and I heard, as if it were the noise of thunder, one of the beasts saying: Come and see."

With an insistent hand on Francis's chest, Hannibal encourages him to lean back in the chair, to bring his hips forward to the edge, which he does without complaint though his eyes are wide. Using sure fingers, Hannibal unfastens the button on Francis's trousers and lowers the zipper, being very careful not to look him in the eye but to devote himself to the task at hand.

Francis wears cheap cotton briefs strained now by his visible erection. Hannibal declines to use his hands for the moment, placing them again on Francis's thighs as he presses his lips to Francis's cock through the thin fabric. It earns him a gasp. He does it again, then again.

"And when he had opened the second seal, I heard the second beast say: Come and see."

"This is wrong," Francis whispers.

"The deed is morally indifferent," Hannibal counters. "It merely is." And he gently pries the elastic band of the briefs away from Francis's skin, springing his erection free.

Francis exhales and looks up at the ceiling, a martyr in anticipation of agony and fulfillment.

"Yes," says Hannibal. When he wraps cool fingers around the base of Francis's cock, Francis makes a noise not unlike a sob. Hannibal bends, graceful, and licks slowly from the edge of his finger to the tip of Francis's cock. He purses his lips and blows cool air over the moistened skin.

Francis does not even try to suppress his shuddering now. He is gripping the arms of the chair, knuckles mottled white and red.

When Hannibal looks up, he sees that Francis has his eyes shut tight, but decides that he won't ask him to open them, to witness. That will be for later. He instead leans in again to Francis's cock and takes the head gently in his mouth. The fluid there is smooth with an alkaline taste, a bit like blood. Francis begins to breathe heavily as Hannibal applies gentle, gradual suction.

After a few moments he breaks away, the flesh against his lips shining wet and violent red. Francis lets out a great breath. But it is only a brief respite from sensation.

Whispering now, Hannibal says against him, "And when he had opened the third seal, I heard the third beast say: Come and see." Then he returns to his work, using mouth and throat.

Francis tenses again and cries out: a protest, a plea. "Hannibal," he says, voice choked. "Stop."

With a certain staged regret, Hannibal relents once again and looks up at Francis, who still has his eyes squeezed shut. His face is flushed and pinpoints of sweat have begun to emerge at his temples. "Why do you ask me to stop?"

Francis bites his lip, tormented.

"Francis, look at me."

He at last opens his eyes, but blinks rapidly as though exposed to harsh light.

Hannibal gives his cock a firm squeeze.

"You have to stop." Francis forces the words through a constricted throat.

"Why?"

"I don't want to—I'm so close."

Hannibal gives a low chuckle. "And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say: Come." He pauses, allowing Francis to feel the smile against his heated skin. "And see." He takes Francis in deeply and after no more than twenty or thirty seconds tastes the rush of sweet-saltiness, underlain with slightly metallic notes. Francis's bellow of release rings through the suddenly closer confines of the sitting room.

Hannibal swallows and sits back on his heels, the oxblood leather of his shoes creaking. He removes the silk handkerchief from his breast pocket and dabs at his lips.

Francis's head is thrown back, his chest heaving. He has unconsciously grasped his softening cock. It is a sight that Hannibal takes in with relish. He himself is hard, but needs no reciprocation. Not tonight.

"You are exquisite, Francis. If only you could see what I see."

His cheeks are aflame with a blush: shame and exertion. "I don't think I can…"

Hannibal cuts him off. "I don't expect anything of you." Yet.

Francis realizes he is still exposed and hastily tucks himself back into his trousers. "I don't understand."

"There is nothing to be understood."

Both are silent for a time, Francis with his hands in his lap, crossed over his groin.

"Would you like something to drink?" Hannibal asks. "Tea, perhaps?"

"I should go."

"I will leave that to your discretion, much like the decision as to whether or not you'd prefer to continue our sessions together. The choice is entirely yours."

Francis looks down, appearing to trace the pattern in the rug with his gaze. "I don't want to stop seeing you."

"Good," Hannibal says, picking up his wine glass again from the embossed leather writing surface of the roll-top desk. "I think we're making progress." He drinks. The wine has gone warm, but the complementary flavors on his palate this time are entirely new.


	5. Canto V: The Avaricious (Francis)

Though his mind had been reeling during his visit to Hannibal's home, the aftermath is marked by a notable clarity. On the slushy road home, in the heated womb of the van, his retrospection is sharp.

The meal itself had been a carefully staged examination. Hannibal had wanted to see him, to watch him in a setting more intimate than their therapy sessions. Francis knew at once that he had been meant to perform in a certain way, to rise to the level of the test. The process had grown gradually easier and more assured until Hannibal had begun touching him, then all had cracked to pieces like mirror glass.

In the aftermath, here, the mirror is not reassembling itself but clicking shard by shard out of the frame, revealing what is below. Francis sees the sketch on Hannibal's dining room wall—the sharp demarcations forming a vessel for riotous color that both softens those lines and at the same time deepens their intent. He decides he must see the painting in a larger format. Perhaps in its original. He'll have to find it, travel to see it. Living in Grandmother's house rather than an apartment in the city has afforded him the ability to save quite a bit of money.

He sees Hannibal—clearly now and not through the fog of pleasure-shame—on his knees before him. Willing, eager. Paying him homage.

After he'd come in Hannibal's mouth, he could have leaned over, bestowed a kiss on the man's forehead. He could have taken his slim throat between his hands and throttled the life out of him right there on his expensive rug.

Francis had done neither, but sees now that both and more were possible.

When he reaches his house, he is at the same time eager for another dream and entirely unable to sleep. He places the leather-bound Bible next to his weight bench, then goes to the bathroom to remove and soak his bridge. The medicine cabinet over the sink remains open as it always does, the mirrored door facing the wall, displaying yellowing plastic shelves rather than showing Francis his own face.

You are exquisite, Francis.

The appliance clatters into a clean glass, which is filled with water. Two tablets of cleaning solution hiss in afterward. Grandmother's teeth remain where he left them, askew in their own glass. He takes them out and, not without hesitation, pulls the door of the medicine cabinet to. The disused hinges scream.

Wincing at the reflection that stares back at him, Francis holds the dentures in front of his face, far enough forward that they cover nearly his entire mouth, scar and all. They look like a rusted scythe embedded in his flesh, and that for once is a rupture with which he can cope. The one that constantly haunts him returns when he lowers the teeth again, and he knocks the medicine cabinet door back toward the wall, where it slams and shudders.

Grandmother's teeth go back into their cup.

If only you could see what I see.

In the attic studio, he strips naked, peeling the briefs gingerly away from his sticky skin. Francis examines himself for signs of Hannibal's presence, his attentions, but there appear to be none. It is as if he remains untouched.

He lays on his back on the vinyl bench, grasping the old, worn metal of the barbell for chest presses.

Five...ten…

After Francis had left the house, what had Hannibal done? Had he remained in the sitting room, sipping his wine? Had he cleaned up the dinner dishes? Had he touched himself the way Francis did when he needed release?

Fifteen...twenty…

It is difficult to picture Hannibal behaving in such an undignified manner—legs splayed, trousers around his ankles, rutting into his hand. Francis flushes and bites down on his lip until he tastes blood.

Twenty-five…

Will he be expected to do the same for Hannibal at some point? It is both too easy and too upsetting to imagine himself on his knees before Hannibal in the soft darkness of his office, taking what is offered. Trying to. He is desperate to know what Hannibal was thinking while he was performing the act. Was he envisioning cleaving him apart, filling his hands with Francis's bright red blood while Francis filled his throat in his ineffectual death throes? No, impossible. Only Francis's thoughts were bad like that, wrong like that.

He growls behind clenched teeth and hangs the bar back up on its hooks.

Thirty...pathetic.

He sits up and howls into the close dimness, muscles seemingly too slack to push.

No.

Francis reaches for his wallet and fumbles out the picture of Andy's family with sweaty fingers. His breath makes the paper sway as he holds it. Helen Jacobi is looking beyond the camera, the two spots of red on her round cheeks vibrant, insistent.

Francis is able to take a deep breath at last. He sets the picture atop the Bible and lays down once again, taking up the bar.

After some calls around, he has managed to locate a print of The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed in Sun. It is a replica on archival-quality paper dug from the stores at the Baltimore Museum of Art shop. Francis had initially been crushed that he had missed the museum's Blake retrospective several months ago, but was informed it had not featured any of the Great Red Dragon paintings. This print was only a commercial ploy, and it seemed one that had failed more or less considering the excess inventory.

He has arranged to view it before work and is steeling himself for the inevitable side-eyed looks and fumbling dialogue with the clerk at the shop.

Parking at one of the meters in the dedicated visitors' circle on Art Museum Drive, he dons his jacket and goes squinting out into the midday sunlight. To the left of the museum building proper is a small gathering of people. Francis sees a couple of television cameras set up on tripods, a few smartly dressed on-location reporters shivering without coats. A path leading into a tree-lined area is cordoned off with yellow police tape, and a lone officer stands tacit guard alongside it.

No one pays attention to Francis as he stands and stares for a few moments. Then he snugs on his knit hat and walks toward the Neoclassical marble entrance.

Fortunately, the shop is just inside the glass double doors, through a metal detector. The fat woman at the desk stares with moon-eyes as she informs him that he won't need to buy a ticket if he's just going into the store. Francis thanks her nonetheless.

There is a young man with patchy facial hair standing behind the shop's checkout counter. Francis is the only patron, but it is a weekday and traffic in the museum will be slow. The man does a double-take.

"Are you the clerk I spoke with yes—the day before?" Francis asks.

He shakes his head. "I don't think so, man. Is something wrong?"

"I'm the one who ordered the print. The William Blake."

Then the clerk's face breaks into a half-smile. "Oh, yeah. Yeah, Colin told me about that. Said you'd be picking it up today."

"May I look at it?"

For a moment the clerk doesn't move. "Oh, sure, sure." He looks around Francis's broad shoulders on both sides to see that there aren't any other patrons, then shoots a look at the cash register.

Francis clenches his teeth, the bridge moving slightly.

"Hold on," the clerk says. A few moments later he emerges from the back room with a cardboard tube, which he extends toward Francis.

"Can you take it out...please?"

"Yeah, yeah. Sure." The clerk knocks the open end of the tube once, hard against his palm, then reaches inside and pulls the rolled paper from within. The edges are ragged, most likely meant to make it look as though it is printed on handmade stock.

Francis's heart begins to thump.

The clerk unrolls the print, which is larger than Francis expected, probably larger than the painting itself. "Is this the one you wanted?"

Underneath the knobby, unworthy fingers, the Dragon emerges: horns, wings, the seemingly impossible muscles of his back and hindquarters. Below, Francis can see the yellow-orange glow, the hair of the Woman Clothed in Sun as it whips in the wind of the fierce Dragon's wings.

He allows the corners of his mouth to curl upward a little. "Mm-hm."

"Great, great," the clerk tells him. "You want me to roll it up for you?"

"Mm-hm."

"I don't know if Colin told you, but it's forty-five. Fifty-one fourteen with tax."

"Fine," Francis says, pulling out his wallet. He panics internally for a moment when he realizes the picture of Helen Jacobi is not in there, after which he realizes that he has used it to mark the start of the Book of Revelation in Hannibal's Bible, which is in the passenger seat of the van. He wonders if he shouldn't have left it in there.

The clerk gives another strained smile after he rings up the transaction. Francis pays cash.

"You work security?" the man asks, looking at Francis's uniform underneath his jacket.

"Uh-huh."

"I bet nobody fucks around on your watch."

Francis doesn't want to leave the print in the van, even hidden from view in the windowless back section, so he brings it into the guard station with him, holding it in the crook of his arm as he greets Levon. The Bible is in his other hand.

"Whatcha reading, my man?"

Francis says nothing, but he does place the heavy book on the top of the guard desk. Someone has cleared away the dead and dying flowers from the table by the coffee pot.

"Ahh," Levon says with a huge smile. "The Good Book. Feel the need to brush up on your faith? I re-read it cover to cover once every two or three years. Honestly, with that tiny print, it's all my eyes can handle. But I'd read it every year if I could. Do you go to church?"

Francis shakes his head. He doesn't want to get into this with Levon, or with anyone else.

"I admit I don't go as often as I should," Levon continues. "But there are other places to worship."

Francis sees in his mind the shadowy, leather-scented sitting room in Hannibal's home. He tastes the dry Riesling on his tongue. "Other places," he says, then turns to take his seat behind the desk, sliding the print in its cardboard tube into the footwell. Though Levon is eyeing it as it disappears from his sight, he says nothing, and for this Francis is grateful.

Both he and Hammond exit for the afternoon with little fanfare, leaving Francis to his screens and his thoughts. So entranced he is with the very fact of the painting's presence at his feet that it takes him several minutes to recognize that now the upper right-hand screen is showing clearly, as well.

He runs his hands for long moments over the embossing on the cover before he is able to muster the courage to open it. The first few pages of onionskin rustle in the canned air from the heating vent and a rich smell of old paper drifts upward. Francis shudders. He remembers the moldering old Bible that Grandmother kept by her bedside. He'd felt its solid bulk across his face on more than one occasion, more often than not knocking him to the ground.

Naughty boys burn in Hell. You, Francis: you were born bad.

I know, he thinks, and begins to read.

The language is flowery, poetic, and sometimes strange. And yet the imagery is sometimes terribly simplistic, inherent in it those things that awed pre-modern man: weather, riches, fire. These things, Francis thinks, still have the power to awe and to control. We only pretend that they can't, and maybe that's the greater ignorance.

His heartbeat quickens, loud in his ears as he reads over the portions that Hannibal recited to him after their dinner. Terrors spoken as words of affection. Come and see.

And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood.

Francis read and re-read the line. There had been an earthquake in his dream—marking the waking of the dragon.

Suddenly energized, he skims the lines for the word. There...at last.

And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars:

And she being with child cried, travailing in birth, and pained to be delivered.

And there appeared another wonder in heaven; and behold a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads.

And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth: and the dragon stood before the woman which was ready to be delivered, for to devour her child as soon as it was born.

Francis chewed the inside of his cheek. He was somewhat annoyed with the idea of the child. It had been impossible for him to tell when looking at any of the Blake paintings on Hannibal's iPad that the woman was pregnant. She seemed pale and plump, shining and full of life, like Helen Jacobi. Francis had wanted the painting to represent the meeting of the woman and the great dragon alone on the great black and star-filled field of Blake's imagination.

As he reads on, though, the fate of the child seems to matter little if at all. It was, apparently, "caught up to the throne of God," but instead the dragon went on in his pursuit of the woman, even after being cast out of Heaven. This pleases Francis.

If not for the sudden phlegmy rattle of the heating system into momentary dormancy, Francis would not have looked up from the book to see the group moving toward the Life Sciences building. Carl is there, the top of his balding head showing stark white. The woman that Reba called Peggy is there, as well, moving a few paces behind Carl. But she has no one on her arm. Francis watches as one by one the figures slip from the camera's view. Reba is not among them.

He feels his heart hammering in his chest once again. Perhaps she has quit the study; perhaps it is too difficult after all for a blind woman to make her way across the city to be poked at and prodded by undergraduate students. Francis suppresses the urge to call Hannibal.

Instead, he rises from behind the desk, leaving the Bible but taking the print. He'll just check to see that she has arrived safely at room 504 of the Life Sciences building, if she is in fact there. He hopes.

Without his jacket, he expects discomfort in the open breezeway, but his blood is circulating too wildly at the thought of Reba's absence for him to register the cold. Warm air boils out when he opens the door to the tunnel and suddenly he is sweating, moisture dripping between his shoulder blades to the small of his back, pooling at the line where his belt cinches.

Francis takes the elevator to the fifth floor. The room in which the studies are taking place is full of participants, talking in hushed tones. A man emerges from a neighboring room, holding a clipboard. He is very diminutive, with a small goatee, and he stops dead when he sees Francis standing outside the door, peering in.

"Is everything all right, officer?" the man says, erroneously assuming Francis is with the police.

He looks for just one moment more, not having seen Reba's lovely face, her staring eyes. Maybe—maybe—she is the one in the adjacent room. He grits his teeth and turns to the small man.

"Wrong room," he says.

"Which one are you looking for?" the man calls after him, but Francis has already turned and is headed back to the elevator. In the hallway leading to the tunnel, he stops when he sees a blur of white, orange, and black on a wall-mounted bulletin board. The image is the face of a roaring tiger, its white ruff and teeth huge.

Opportunity for Biology students! the flyer reads. Zoo Baltimore is keeping a Bengal tiger for rehabilitation for a LIMITED TIME ONLY. Zoo staff invites UB biology majors to observe while he is under sedation. Contact for more details.

Underneath the poster is a fringe of tiny paper tabs, half of them torn away, each printed with a name and an email address. Francis is not sure why, but he takes one and slips it into his wallet, holding the cardboard tube containing the print under his arm.

There is someone in the guard station when he returns. Someone in a uniform, though Francis doesn't recognize him. He is young and very slim, the clothing baggy on his frame. The young man begins to smile, then it falters. He actually shakes his head as if to clear an offensive image.

"You manning the desk?" he asks Francis, at long last.

Francis nods.

Both stand for a few beats, unsure of where to take the nascent conversation.

"Are you at the garage?" Francis asks.

"Yeah," he says, extending a hand. "Andre."

Taking Andre's hand in his, Francis imagines for a brief moment clamping down, breaking the bones like bird legs, twisting the wrist free of its cartilaginous moorings. He doesn't. "People call me 'D,'" he says.

"Good to meet you, D. Are you the guy who does the coffee?"

Looking past Andre's shoulder, he sees that the stained coffee pot is empty, the sticky residue of the last batch burning into the bottom of the carafe on the still-hot warming plate.

"No."

"Gotcha, gotcha." It is clear Andre is uncomfortable. "I shouldn't drink any more anyway." He could easily make another pot, but he likely does not want to be in Francis's presence as it brews, to be forced to make conversation. "Catch you later," he says, and walks out the door, dry, cold air swirling in behind him.

In his bed, freshly showered after a punishing training session, Francis wakes from a dream. The cardboard tube—as yet unopened—lies beside him. He reaches out for it on instinct, groping with trembling fingers.

He had been walking the same dark landscape, though the faint moon this time had been the bloody orb of Revelation. Past the blood-filled stream, he looked for Reba in the place where she should have been. Instead, there lay the skin of a tiger, complete with head, paws, and tail, its eyes replaced with milk-pale marbles.

Francis had bent to touch it. The fur was almost unimaginably soft under his fingertips. He both expected and did not expect the first tremor, which made the loose soil around the tiger's skin dance like a drum head. Without lungs, still the tiger had moaned, its false eyes rolling.

Francis stood and stepped over the skin, leaving it behind him. As conspicuous as Reba's absence was that of Grandmother, though there was no wolf skin in her stead.

In the clearing, the Dragon had squatted on its mountain pedestal. It was now, of course, Blake's Dragon, its seven heads all with teeth grinding, filling the air with the squeals of cleaving rock. Between its enormous legs hung a huge penis, red and rampant. Frances had clenched his fists, but had not run. None of the heads were looking at him, anyway. They all faced heavenward, and Francis followed its many gazes to a point of light above the moon. The earth shook again as the Dragon whipped its tail upward, swiping the point of light from its far perch and sending it hurtling toward the earth.

It appeared as a fiery golden comet, and in the circle of flame, Helen Jacobi lay curled, her eyes shut tight against the vertigo of her descent. Instead of shattering on impact with the ground, she burst from the womb of the comet into blazing life. The flushed spots on her cheeks were novae, brighter than her eyes.

She hovered in the air between Francis and the Dragon. So entranced he had been by her appearance that he had failed to see for a long time that the Dragon's heads now looked at him. In their eyes was not rage or condemnation but a sort of interrogative curiosity. As though it asked permission.

Yes, Francis said within his dream-mind, but his dream-body shook its head insistently. He had woken to the echoes of the Dragon's multi-voiced roar.

The following evening, Francis does not bring either the print or the Bible to work, though he checks the locks on the front door of the house three times before he is satisfied enough to leave.

The low sky threatens rain during the long drive into the city; Francis can smell it on the wind. Thankfully, Levon makes no mention of his lack of reading material. Soon he and Hammond depart and the guard station belongs to Francis alone.

At five o'clock, he catches sight of motion in the hallway to the Life Sciences building. He leans closer to the screen. Again, Carl leads the group that passes the camera, but there—on Peggy's arm just as before—is Reba, holding her cane and smiling faintly. Francis smiles back, a full grin that stretches the scar.

A few moments before six, the rain comes. It batters the windows, the attendant wind moving the rubber seal on the door like breath.

At seven-thirty, the group involved in the study meanders back up the hallway. Francis is disconcerted by the fact that Reba is now on Carl's arm. They stop in the middle of the hallway, just below the camera's eye, and exchange words. Francis tries to make out what they're saying but fails. What he does see is Reba trying to wrest her arm from Carl's grip.

Convinced he needs no context, Francis gets up out of his chair and jogs out toward the building. He meets the group just as they walk out into the rain, which thrums on the aluminum roof of the breezeway.

Reba is no longer holding onto Carl's arm. She is bringing up the rear of the group, tapping her cane with short, percussive strokes.

"Is there a problem here?" Francis asks.

"What? No," says Carl.

"The lady would prefer to walk alone," Francis tells him. Beyond the huddled group, being spattered by droplets, Reba raises her head.

"What the hell? I don't understand what you're saying. Look, buddy, we're all getting wet here. Can you let us by?"

Francis steps to the side, but Carl does not pass him. Instead, he circles back to Reba. "C'mon, kiddo," he says to her. "Let's get you home."

"I have a ride, Carl," she says, avoiding his grip as deftly as if she can see him reaching for her.

"I thought you said you were going to take the bus."

"I have a ride, okay? Thanks, but...go ahead."

Just past Francis, the rest of the group is waiting, still huddled together, each sporting the half-frightened, half-expectant look that spectators to a possible scuffle wear.

Carl begins to walk again, but Reba stands still. "Okay," he says. "Suit yourself." He shoots a look at Francis as he walks on.

Reluctant to speak for a moment, Francis says as the group walks away, "You can wait for your ride in the guard...hut."

After a moment, Reba ventures a smile. "Thanks. I'll do that."

Just before the door of the guards' station, Reba gives a forced little giggle. "I lied," she said.

"Huh?" Francis asks.

"I lied to Carl. I don't have a ride. If I could just wait in here until the rain lets up, I'll grab the next bus."

Before Francis is able to censor himself, the same words as before are out of his mouth: "I'll take you."

"Pardon?"

"I'll take you home. Give you a ride. Home." He grimaces, glad that she is unable to see it.

"Oh, no, that's okay, D."

"Please," he sounds out carefully. "You'll get wet."

"Oh...I really couldn't possibly. Don't you have to work?"

"Andre can come in." The lie is easy.

Another gust blows cold rain into their faces. "Gosh," Reba says. "Are you sure?"

"Mm-hm. Yes." He opens the door for her and ushers her inside. "Wait here. I'll get the van." Turning his collar up against the rain, Francis runs toward the uncovered employee parking lot. Inside the van, The Power of Myth still sits in the passenger seat. Francis tosses it into the back, where it lands with a hollow thud.

He takes off his jacket even though the cold torrent stings his skin, and holds it over Reba's head as they walk the few feet to the idling van at the curb. It is only when they are settled inside that he hesitates for a moment. If anyone finds out he has left his post he could lose his job. Reba is looking forward through the windshield, expectant as if she can see the road ahead. Francis's heart clenches and he puts the transmission in 'drive.'

It turns out that she lives, as might be expected, in Taylor Heights very close to the School for the Blind. The small yellow duplex borders the park.

"Right or left?" Francis asks.

"Right," Reba says. "Are we here already?"

"Mm-hm. The rain has let up a little."

"I'm sure I could have gotten the bus."

"I—I didn't mean—"

Reba laughs. "I'm teasing you, D. You gotta lighten up." She fumbles for the door handle.

"Let me," Francis says.

Reba seems to know exactly where the smooth, paved walk branches off toward her own front door. She tucks her cane beneath her arm and digs a set of keys out of her coat pocket.

Francis watches with wonder as she runs a finger down the edge of each key until she finds the one she wants.

The interior is homey and smells faintly of baked goods. Reba nearly disappears in the dark interior, then about-faces and fumbles at the wall for the light switch.

"Did that come on?" she asks. "Obviously I don't use it much. I can't tell if the bulb's out."

She is so, so lovely in the buttery light. "Uh-huh. I can see." There is a yellow floral sofa, lace curtains by the breakfast nook. Things Francis has seen on television, but not in real life.

Reba relaxes at once into the familiar environment, leaving her cane by the door. "I had a friend help me decorate. Help," she says, "hell. She did all of the decorating. I hope it isn't too terrible."

Francis shakes his head, but then remembers that she can't see. "Nice," he tells her. "Will you be okay?"

"This is my sanctum sanctorum. I'll be just fine." She stops mid-step on her way into the kitchen. "Are you sure you can't stay for some pie? I just made it. Well, earlier today."

"I sh—I need to get back."

"Please, D? I have to thank you somehow. I promise it's good. I'll even try it before you do if you don't believe me."

Francis pictures the empty guard desk, the flickering screens—three now showing sharp and defined, the rest their usual stew of quivering static. He inhales and expects the smell of wilted flowers, linoleum cleaner, burned coffee. Reba has already removed a glass pie pan from the cool oven. "Okay," he says.

"Great." Her smile is a revelation. "I'll make coffee, too, if you have time."

He catches himself mid-nod. "Uh-huh. Yeah."

When the coffeemaker has begun its hissing and spitting, Reba returns to her pie. "Big slice or little slice? Wait, don't tell me. Big."

Anything you want. "Mm-hm."

She grins again. "You must eat like a horse. I'm sorry. Was that rude? I just kind of let all my inhibitions slip when I'm in my element here at home."

"No," Francis said. "Not rude."

Her fingertips quivering on the butter-sheened crust, Reba placed a hefty slice of the pecan pie on a plate and slid it across the counter in the general direction of Francis's voice. "Ah yeah," she said. "Fork."

The mouthful he takes is sweet on his tongue, almost unbearably so. "Good," he says. "Very."

"How do you take your coffee?"

"However."

Reba stops, knife in hand, one side of her mouth quirked up.

He could so easily take the sliver of steel from her fingers...no.

"You're a hard man to read, D." She places the knife on the counter where it gives a short metallic ring. "Can I ask you a weird question?"

Francis says nothing.

"Can I touch your face?" she asks. "I can't tell by the tone of your voice. I just...want to know if you're smiling or frowning." She reaches toward him, but he catches her fingertips gently in his hand. Reba is the only one of them who wears a smile.

"Take my word that I'm smiling," he says.

She backs away and picks up the knife again, but then puts it back down. "I'm probably going to regret this," she says, "but I'm going to say it anyway. Peggy tells me you're self-conscious about your face. And she tells me that you shouldn't be. Not at all."

"I need to go."

"Oh, dammit. D, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to offend you."

He takes a deep breath. "No," he tells her. "You didn't. But I do need to go."

"Okay."

As he closes the door behind him, he hears her say, "Shit."

If anyone had come by the guard cabin during his absence, there had been no evidence of it when Francis had returned. The coffee pot still stood empty.

He is unable to sleep when he returns home—in part due to the continued shuddering of his thoughts in the wake left by Reba's kindness. He is unmoored by it.

In the bathroom once again, before he takes his bridge out, he swings the medicine cabinet door closed, steeling himself for the sight that greets him.

Peggy tells me you're self-conscious about your face. And she tells me that you shouldn't be.

Francis looks at his own reflection for a few moments. In what comes as almost a surprise to himself, he raises a fist and drives it into the mirror, which fragments, the stinging cracks opening fissures in his knuckles.

Not at all.

Leaving the glass on the bathroom floor, Francis goes to his bed, where the print in its cardboard tube still lays. He is half-reluctant to remove it but feels he needs to see it. The chemical smell of new paper is not off-putting enough to prevent his unrolling it and staring at the Dragon, the woman. Blood runs down his forearm and droplets patter onto the sheet, but by holding his hand just so, he avoids getting any of it on the paper.

When he sets it aside it rolls once again into a tight spiral.

With the blood tightening and drying on his skin, he picks up the Bible. The picture of Helen Jacobi flutters and lands face-down. She is too pale, anyway. Shining, not glowing like Reba. In his mind, Reba emerges from a blood-orange lily. He shakes his head and reads.

...and I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns.

And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet colour, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication:

And upon her forehead was a name written, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.

His cock stirs in his pants but he refuses to touch himself. Nor is he able to imagine Hannibal's hot mouth on him. He begins to ache, but still he ignores it.

"What have you read of Revelation, if I may ask?" Hannibal asks him as they sit across from one another in his office. Today it smells faintly of woodsmoke though there is no fireplace. Francis must assume the scent has followed him in from outdoors. It is cold, but not cold enough to snow. Not yet.

He watches Hannibal's lips. "I finished it."

"Hallucinatory, to say the least."

Francis nods.

"Did you recognize the parts that were reminiscent of your dreams?"

Another nod.

"Have you dreamed of more women?"

"Not dreamed."

Something flashes in Hannibal's eyes for a moment. Then it is gone, making Francis wonder if he even saw anything at all. "You returned to the deli."

"No. There's—" He hesitates. Reba is his secret, his prize. "A woman at work."

"One of your co-workers?"

"No. She visits the school. I gave her a ride home."

"Do you picture doing her harm?"

"I...try not to."

"Do you succeed?"

Francis says nothing.

"She is good, then. An archetype of virtue."

Something about Hannibal's assessment doesn't sit right with Francis. "She's real."

"John of Patmos, I suspect, had experience with few real women," Hannibal says. "It seems apparent from his characterization. They are either virtuous or profligate, and there exists no middle ground."

"The Woman Clothed with the Sun," Francis says.

"And the scarlet whore," Hannibal counters. "One extreme or the other. One or the other choice."

"God or the Devil," Francis says, tentative.

"Yes. Though I find all the 'falling on faces in worship' quite dull. Things are more interesting on Earth than in Heaven. The Son of Man with his wool-white hair and feet of brass. Quite encumbered."

"But the Dragon was trapped in the pit for a thousand years."

"Till the thousand years should be fulfilled," Hannibal quotes. "And after that he must be loosed a little season."

Levon is ebullient when Francis arrives at work the next day. The wind once again whips rain against the walls of the guards' station.

"Hey," says Levon, who is setting another pot of coffee to brew, "Did you hear the good news?"

Francis shakes his head even though Levon can't see him.

"Andy's off the machine. Breathing on his own now."

He cannot help but exhale sharply. Tendrils of gray mist swirl before his eyes.

Levon seems to take it for relief. "I know, right?" When he turns around, though, his brows furrow. "Jeez, man. You look awful. If you don't mind my saying. You sick?"

"Sick," Francis echoes, not caring about the butchered 's.'

The apparent inner debate flickers across Levon's face for a few long seconds, after which he finally says, "Why don't you go ahead and go home? I could use the overtime, anyway."

Terrified of stumbling and slamming his bulk into Levon or one of the furniture fixtures (the corner table), Francis reaches out to brace himself against the guard desk. When he trusts himself to nod without vertigo, he does so.

Levon's hand on his forearm startles him.

"Are you okay to drive?"

Francis nods again and at once heads out the door and into the lashing rain.

There are low lights visible at Hannibal's house. He doesn't know why he's driven here instead of the office, but he parks the van beside the curb—an eyesore in the neighborhood no doubt—and shambles toward the front door.

He is shivering, yet feels nothing but intense heat. When he has finally found shelter under the portico, Hannibal opens the door. He must have seen the van pull up.

"Please, Francis, come in."

Francis's soaked clothes drool rainwater onto the slate of the entryway. Unmindful of the mess, Hannibal places a hand at the small of his back and guides him into the lamplit interior of the house. Thunder eddies across the sky, rattling the windows.

Too stunned to process the situation, Francis does not process for a few moments that Hannibal has led him to the door of a dim bedroom.

"Wait here," Hannibal tells him.

He can do nothing but obey.

There is the faint sound of a door opening and closing again, then Hannibal returns and holds out a neatly folded pile of fabric. "I believe this will fit you. It's cut generously. Hand me your clothes when you're finished, please."

Francis takes the soft bundle; the garment nearly slipping through his hands like runnels of rainwater.

Hannibal pulls the door to.

Until it falls from his grip and he picks it up again, Francis is unable to tell that what he holds is a sort of robe. The sash trails on the ground at his feet. Indeed, the sleeves are cut very wide. He turns the kimono around. Winding over the broad swath of silk is the sinuous body of a serpent, embroidered in red.

Another thunderclap.

Though it is a little tight across the back, and seems very thin, the silk holds in the heat of his body. He thrusts the ball of soaked polyester toward Hannibal, whose expression is neutral—not appraising, not critical.

After Hannibal returns, drying his hands on a small hand towel, Francis follows him again to the sitting room. However, they pass through it and into a formal living area. When Hannibal clicks on the lamp, Francis is startled by an apparition that makes him flinch back. It is, of course, his own reflection in a floor-to-ceiling mirror—swathed in black and red—snarling. No, not snarling. Merely as he is.

He puts a hand over his mouth and looks away at the same time.

Hannibal's face may or may not be graced with an almost imperceptible smile. "I'll make you some tea," he says. "Sit down."

Francis seats himself on a scroll-top, carven-frame couch placed parallel to the huge mirror, only to nearly leap out of his seat again when the insistent strains of a string quartet roar to life from hidden speakers. The volume is immediately lowered.

"My apologies," says Hannibal when he returns with a silver tea service. "I often like to immerse myself in sound. It clears the mind."

Francis takes the teacup, and this time sips from the steaming liquid, relishing somewhat the rousing effect when he burns his palate.

"It suits you," says Hannibal.

Suddenly, Francis feels very exposed. He moves the silk to cover his thigh in an almost prim fashion.

"Has something happened?"

"Andy," he says, voice emerging raspy and broken-sounding.

"He's come out of the coma?" Hannibal asks, tilting his chin slightly.

Francis shakes his head. "Came off the breathing machine."

"Possibly signifying imminent recovery."

A nod. Francis sips at his tea, careful to place the lip of the cup as far away from the scar as he can.

"It is no doubt what his wife and family wish for," says Hannibal. "May I assume that you wish for the opposite?"

Francis bites the inside of his cheek. He exhales. "Yes."

"Perhaps you'll be lucky."

"I hate not knowing."

"Uncertainty dogs us all," Hannibal says, looking very much as though he is not someone plagued by doubt. "So much is in the hands of fortune, so much more is able to be influenced. Occasionally the paths cross."

I'm afraid, Francis wants to say.

"When were you born, Francis?"

It is an abrupt redirection, but Francis holds onto it. "Nineteen seventy-nine. July."

"What coincidence," says Hannibal. "Did you know there was a total eclipse of the sun in February of that year? Visible from nearly all of North America. They say that children born of mothers who walk outside during a solar eclipse will have the cleft lip."

Francis cannot look at Hannibal's face.

"Modern surgical techniques are wonderful. They certainly have progressed since I practiced."

"You were a surgeon?"

"Before I chose psychiatry, yes."

Unbidden, the image of the woman at the deli appears before him. Like the Dragon in his dream, though, he waits—knife in hand—for permission from Hannibal. The thought surprises him into looking up.

Now Hannibal's smile is fuller. "How does that make you feel?"

"I don't know," Francis says.

"I'd like to try a little experiment," Hannibal tells him. "Only if you're willing."

Memories of the night of the dinner here rush back, and Francis feels a clench of desire deep in his gut. But Hannibal does not touch him.

"Come with me," he says instead.

Reluctant, Francis follows him to the mirror. He cannot help but turn his head when he sees his own face.

"I'd like you to look, please."

Francis clenches his fists at his side, but he does as he is bid.

"What do you see?" asks Hannibal.

"Nothing. Nothing."

"Look beyond what is in the mirror. To the place you were before. When I told you I practiced surgery."

That he had such sheer incisive perception shocks Francis and he turns his head toward Hannibal, who says, "Look ahead, please. Always ahead, dear pilgrim."

When he looks back, Francis watches his reflection blur and waver as if captured by one of the poorly functioning cameras on the University of Baltimore campus.

"What do you see?"

"A woman."

"The woman you drove home."

"No." The denial is emphatic. "Blonde."

"The woman from the deli."

The Woman Clothed in Sun. "Andy's wife."

Hannibal does not question it. "What is she doing?"

"Crying."

"Do you want to help her?"

He pauses. "No."

"Do you want her?"

"No. Yes."

"Do you want to hurt her?"

Francis feels cool air on his skin. He had not realized he was growing hard until his erection had parted the folds of the robe. "Yes."

Hannibal pulls at the sash and the robe falls open, whispering over Francis's flesh. "Tell me."

The breath is stuck in Francis's throat. "I—"

"Don't be afraid."

He bites back the sting of tears. "Her face. Her body. She's blushing. The blood...filling her skin."

"Are you touching her?"

In his mind, Francis's arm is red, covered in scales, the insistent shade shaming even Helen Jacobi's terrified, aroused flush. His fingers are tipped with sharp black claws. Deep, blood-gorged canals open in her flesh as he draws his hand down her body. "Yes."

"What is she doing?"

Francis squeezes his eyes shut, but remembers Hannibal's command and opens them again. "Bleeding," he whispers. Hannibal's fingers are soft at his neck, pulling the fabric away. The silk puddles on the floor.

"How do you feel?" Hannibal asks, his lips very close to the skin of Francis's shoulder.

Instead of answering, he says, "Touch me?"

"I want you to touch yourself."

There is a great rush of familiar relief as Francis wraps his hand around his cock. He can no longer see his own reflection, only the spreading pool of gore enrobing the shining figure of Helen Jacobi. Her eyes are beacon-bright.

"Good," says Hannibal.

His hand is sweaty as he strokes himself—faster now. He is too enraptured even to gasp when he feels clever fingers between his buttocks, stroking. Hannibal is a warm presence behind him, a wall of sensation rife with the scratch of wool, the soft scrape of cotton, embroidered silk. A hand on his hip.

"Faster," Hannibal instructs.

Francis groans. It hurts somewhat, but he can't stop. Won't stop.

Hannibal kisses his sweat-sheened skin. "You are beautiful."

Francis cannot register the shock, the disconnect of the sentiment with what he suddenly sees reflected before him because he is coming.

"Very good," says Hannibal.

Reeling in his euphoria, Francis feels the slight press of small, white teeth against his flesh.


End file.
